MICHAEL Stewart accused Craig Levein of making a “glaring mistake” in appointing Ian Cathro.
Stewart, a former Hearts player, felt the 31-year-old was never going to be a success given his lack of experience.
“To a certain extent, I feel a little bit sorry for Cathro,” he said. “He was so clearly not adequate for the job and his shortcomings were clear for everybody to see.
“And the bigger picture for me is the management structure above that put Cathro into the position he was in, because it was such a glaring mistake. It wasn’t even a case of, yes, maybe and mitigating circumstances, it was a guy who was drowning in the position he was in.
Read more: The Ian Cathro experiment at Hearts was ambitious - but doomed to failure from the start
“I look up above him, he seemed to get very little support publicly from his boss and his boss has now fired the gun and bulleted him. But how can sacking a head coach days before the start of the season not draw the question of how did he see this as a good appointment?
“You have given him the summer, recruited players, pre-season to work with players and then you sack a manager days before the start of the league season. That is an indictment on the judgement of that director
of football.
“He had known Cathro for a number of years yet saw fit to make this appointment, while people who barely knew him had spotted within days this weakness in his character in terms of communication and people skills.
“Bluntly, I don’t think Levein is a positive for the club. I don’t think there’s any danger he will go. I think he has manufactured this position in respect of him being director of football for this exact reason, so he is insulated from the criticism.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here