NO MATTER how long Hearts’ 100 per cent league record continues, no matter how frenzied the speculation grows about their hopes of winning the title, you can be sure of one thing: Robbie Neilson will remain unmoved. Pundits may talk Hearts up, opponents talk them down, but the head coach will respond to neither adulation nor provocation.
It was the same last season when the Tynecastle club were in the Championship. When Kenny Miller and Darren McGregor, among other Rangers players, questioned Hearts’ bottle, Neilson refused to get involved. And even in spring, when journalists turned up at Riccarton and suggested that, being dozens of points clear of their rivals, Hearts were champions in all but name, he remained cautious and calm. “We’ve given ourselves a good chance,” was the most you would get out of him.
This no-drama approach stood Hearts in good stead, and was just one of the reasons why Neilson impressed so highly in his first season in charge of the team. With so many potential distractions in a division that included Hibernian as well as Rangers, he knew it was vital that his own players keep their eye on the ball both literally and metaphorically.
It is an attitude that is all the more important now that Hearts are back in the Premiership and on top of the table after winning their first five games. And it is one, moreover, that contrasts starkly with the last time they had such a successful start to the season back in 2005.
Beginning a season under Vladimir Romanov’s control for the first time then, Hearts won their first eight league matches to get off to their best start since 1914. In the eighth and last game of that winning run, they beat Rangers 1-0 at Tynecastle to confirm that they, not the Ibrox club, would be the biggest challengers to Celtic.
Then George Burley was sacked, there was upheaval in the board room, players fell in and out of favour, and the performances began to drop off. Given they won the Scottish Cup and finished second to Celtic, Hearts could still regard it as a very successful season, but the club’s supporters will always speculate about what might have been had Burley and Romanov been able to see eye to eye for longer.
In effect, the title challenge, already faltering, was killed off on New Year’s Day, when Celtic travelled to Gorgie, fell 2-0 behind, but went home with a 3-2 win and a lead in the table that had just stretched to seven points. By the end of the season the gap had stretched to 17 points.
So should we expect something similar this time round? Will it again all be over by Christmas or even earlier?
Comparing the two squad, Burley’s and Neilson’s, might initially lead you to answer yes to those questions. Certainly, no-one in the current team has yet had quite the impact that Rudi Skacel did back then.
Craig Gordon was in goal, Steven Pressley wore the captain’s armband, and Paul Hartley was in imperious form. The homegrown players available to Neilson are not yet at that level.
Of the arrivals from abroad, Greek full-back Takis Fyssas had won Euro 2004 and in the same year Edgaras Jankauskas had won the Champions League with Porto.
Juanma, Juwon Oshaniwa and other new arrivals have been overnight successes, but they are not at that level of achievement.
That is on the debit side when you compare this season’s squad to their predecessors of a decade ago. But there are two reasons why Hearts fans should perhaps be more hopeful this time. One is the fact that the current Celtic team, for all that they have been far and away the best side in the country these past few years, compare unfavourably to their own forerunners from ten years ago. The other is Neilson himself.
Of course, if Celtic’s standards were to slip, or if they found themselves still in a race in January, they could use their immense financial clout to bring in more quality. Neilson cannot do anything about that disparity in riches, which will favour the Glasgow club into the foreseeable future. But he can and will do everything he can to counteract that disparity by trying to be smarter both in the transfer market and tactically on the field of play.
What is more, Neilson will act rationally, methodically and relentlessly - ways of behaving that, not always through their own fault, were unavailable to Burley and his successors in 2005-06. He has already assembled a far stronger squad than the one he had last year, and, with secure funding in place thanks to the Foundation of Hearts, he knows he can continue to build steadily for as long as he stays at the club.
In other words, there is a medium- to long-term plan in place at Tynecastle where previously there was a combination of chaos and inertia. Celtic should pull away in the end this season, but Hearts will be back challenging next season too - and the one after that. The meteoric rise and fall is a thing of the past. This time they’re in it for the long haul.
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