Stuart Bathgate: Romanov shows that he has nous for a strategic move as Laszlo becomes a victim of tendency to talk and complain too much

Published Date: 30 January 2010
CSABA Laszlo was in imminent danger of dismissal for the last six months of his year-and-a-half as Hearts manager.
Unusually for a man dangling from a precipice, he preferred to boast about hanging on rather than trying to save himself, and in the end that preference was one of the principal factors in his fall.

The main question being asked yesterday when the news of his departure broke was not so much why as why now? On the face of it, parting company with a manager just four days before the Co-operative Insurance Cup semi-final against St Mirren was a rash move even by the notoriously impetuous standards of Hearts owner Vladimir Romanov.

Paradoxically, though, the reason Laszlo went yesterday was precisely that the timing was right – as became clear yesterday evening when Jim Jefferies met the playing staff to begin his second term as Hearts manager. Romanov has acted impulsively at times, but he would not have become a successful businessman if he were not able to calculate strategically.

In the case of Laszlo, the calculations began during the summer, when the owner and manager disagreed about the need for new strikers. Having had his suggestions for who to recruit turned down, Laszlo asked the players if he should stay and fight his corner, or admit defeat and resign. They told him to stay.

Those events gradually became public in what Romanov and his board regarded as just one of a number of breaches of confidentiality. In the ensuing months, Laszlo would talk more and more openly about his supposed links with other managerial vacancies. Unsurprisingly, the board built up the impression that he was touting himself around, and at some point resolved that enough was enough.

With Romanov and Laszlo increasingly at odds, there was a lot of speculation to the effect that the manager was only still in a job because Hearts could not afford the compensation they would have to pay him for ending his contract. But this overlooked the fact that, thanks to the manager's own utterances, the club were steadily accruing a very good prima facie case for arguing that Laszlo was the one who had breached his conditions of employment.

Having got off to a poor start to the season, Hearts struggled through the autumn and late last year were just a couple of points off the bottom of the SPL. To get rid of Laszlo then would have risked deepening the problem. Romanov held his nerve and waited until the corner was turned.

In late October, as Hearts travelled to Glasgow for a cup tie against Celtic, news broke that they were appointing ex-Lithuania youth coach Ivan Svabovic as their new director of sport. It was a move supposedly designed to improve communications between Laszlo and Romanov, but it would also ensure that the owner would have someone he could trust on the football side of the club.

In the end, for reasons they did not disclose, Hearts did not give Svabovic the job. Instead, two months later, it went to Alek- sandr Metlitski.

Now in place for four weeks, Metlitski has been around long enough to offer the directors his analysis of what was wrong. He may even have been regarded as a possible stand-in successor to Laszlo, but then earlier this month the departure of Jefferies from Kilmarnock put the last piece of the puzzle into place.

Jefferies was in charge of Kilmarnock for two meetings with Hearts this season, and would in any case be expected to have a working knowledge of his new playing squad.

Romanov became aware of his interest in returning to Tynecastle in the summer of 2008, before Laszlo's appointment, and, always mindful that a new manager might be needed sooner rather than later, did not forget it.

But the timing was right not only from the point of view of having a credible alternative in place. It was also right in terms of denying Laszlo the opportunity to boast of taking Hearts into a cup final – an opportunity he would surely have made the most of if his club beat St Mirren at Fir Park on Tuesday night.

Laszlo had already unashamedly painted himself as a superman merely for keeping Hearts on the verges of the top six this season. The sound of the manager's own trumpet was already blowing loud in Romanov's ears: the prospect of another cacophonous chorus could well have been too much to bear.

To complete outsiders, such motives may well appear petty, but Romanov has a record of distrusting those who gain more than a modicum of credit and popularity. Laszlo's success in taking Hearts to third last season did not rankle too much, for all that it endeared him to the club's supporters, as it was achieved in large part with players who were already at the club. Anything similar this season, however, would have been done with a squad shorn of most of its experienced names, and so would have been far more to the manager's credit.

In recent months more and more Hearts fans have become dissatisfied with Laszlo. Even allowing for the threadbare nature of his squad, they have seen him make curious selections and adopt baffling tactics. His players have been all too dispirited at times, reflecting his own feeling that nothing more could be done until Romanov agreed that an injection of new blood was needed.

Now he is gone, Laszlo will be remembered affectionately for his first season, for the quirky sense of humour he indulged in his lengthy public pronouncements, and also for his attempts to remain good-natured in the face of adversity.

Above all, however, he will be remembered – by the fans and the media as well as by Romanov and his colleagues – as the man who talked too much.

Taken from the Scotsman