CRAIG Levein's next phone bill should make interesting reading. It is to be hoped the meticulous Hearts director of football also chose wisely when it came to selecting the right mobile tariff for incoming foreign calls.
"One day during the window I had 125 calls," the 52-year-old says, slightly ruefully.
"We were doing a lot to be fair but it does get manic. Can you imagine if I was trying to manage at the same time? It's difficult."
The rest of the Scottish games likes to mock what is going on down Gorgie way these days, with Levein cast as the control freak upstairs and Ian Cathro merely his latest puppet head coach. But there is a recognition in most modern team sports, not least of them football, that the era of the old-school 'gaffer' is over. Who wouldn't want an experienced, methodical figure like Levein sitting in the front office to establish the wider strategy of their club?
That being the case, though, it is only natural if the former Scotland manager should face legitimate questions as to whether this month has witnessed a sea change in the overarching transfer policy at the club.
Neilson left a Hearts side sitting in second place in the Ladbrokes Premiership but no fewer than nine new faces have arrived - Andraz Struna, Lennard Sowah, Aaron Hughes, Malaury Martin, Esmael Goncalves, Dylan Bikey, Moha El Ouriachi, Alexandros Tziolis and Anastasios Avlonitis - while eight have gone out.
With many of the new arrivals have only been sanctioned thus far on short-term contracts, has the change of manager also meant a change to Hearts' stated aim of being a club with a focus on long-term development?
No, as Levein patiently explains, it hasn't. Instead, it is all a matter of filling in a short-term void as the club waits for its academy reforms to pay dividends.
The last month has Callum Paterson and John Souttar pick up long-term injuries and Arnoud Djoum and Feycal Rherras feature at the Africa Cup of Nations, but more fundamentally than that there is also a short-term shortage of suitable academy prospects to promote which is a legacy of the club's financial woes.
"It's as busy a transfer window as I have had," admits Levein, speaking at Tannadice for the launch of Sean Dillon's testimonial match. "We signed nine players and eight went out - 17 deals in total. That's a lot of players and a lot of work. Clare and Janine in the office did a lot of work and were great.
"We were going to do quite a lot before the change of manager anyway," he added. "Robbie [Neilson] had targeted some stuff and Ian had similar ideas when he came in. So I was expecting some of the business, while some of it came out of the blue. Players appeared that we thought 'we'd love to get a hold of them'. It was a combination of a number of things."
"We were second but in all honesty, we hadn't been up there all season and didn't have a real level of consistency about us. Robbie was complaining about the same thing - saying we had to get more consistent and stronger. Ian came in with much the same ideas. His football is slightly different but once he explains what he's looking for, we have a clear idea."
Each club recruits its players in its own way. In Hearts' case, while the personal connection with the likes of Goncalves - previously loaned between Cathro's Rio Ave and assistant manager Austin MacPhee's St Mirren - and Aaron Hughes - who worked with MacPhee at Northern Ireland - obviously comes into play, in general Cathro sketches out a job specification and Levein uses his contacts in the game to suggest a player capable of filling the need.
"Ian chooses all the players," says Levein. "It wasn't a case of him saying 'I want a player in this position'. It was a case of him saying 'I want a player who can do this, this and this'. It was then easier in terms of dealing with agents and scouts. You target the players that really matter."
Fundamentally, though, developing young, often Scottish, players remains in the club's DNA. "That is still very much at the top end of what we are trying to do," said Levein.
"You will discover that in the net couple of years. We are fixing some things just now. Rory Currie played from the start against Raith Rovers and we have still got [Sam] Nicholson and [Jamie] Walker. There is Jack Hamilton, Callum [Paterson] would probably have been away but Liam Smith has played. Dario Zanatta is not Scottish but he has come through our system in the last couple of years. That will continue because that is what we do. But we need other players that have experience and strengths that our younger players don't have.
"If you look at what has happened since the administration process, about three or four years before that there was no investment in the academy, so everything just slipped," he added. "We lost coaches, we lost players, we lost scouts. And that has had to be built back up again. You can't magic players out of the academy that are not there.
"If you have noticed, you will have seen that we have signed a lot of foreign players for the academy in the last two and a half years. Last year we took two from the academy, but this year we will take seven or eight, and next year it will be another seven or eight."
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