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Sportsound Tonight. 19th Jan


Greedy_Jambo

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The Treasurer

Can't wait for all the brain dead questions they're going to ask him.

Do you think you're qualified to manage a football club seeing as you never played the game ?

 

Don't you think you're too young to manage a football club ?

 

What do you say about the comments from Boyd etc. ?

 

How much influence has Levein got in picking the team ?

 

 

Think that about covers the "in-depth" interview

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Do you think you're qualified to manage a football club seeing as you never played the game ?

 

Don't you think you're too young to manage a football club ?

 

What do you say about the comments from Boyd etc. ?

 

How much influence has Levein got in picking the team ?

 

 

Think that about covers the "in-depth" interview

 
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And -

 

"Dae yous fink there's any chance that great big new truss over the main stand could fa' doon and gie you and Osten a sair head when you are in the dugout?"

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Any guesses how many times he will use the word "work" in an extended interview? I will go for 37.

 

Looking forward to this if they get beyond the predictable questions and get him talking about his assessment of the squad, the players he's brought in, playing style and formation, etc.

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I think it's Tom English who did the interview so hopefully it'll be a bit more in depth

 

Tom Irish? Don't get your hopes up.

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...a bit disco

Spent time with Ian Cathro yesterday. Only half-jokingly, gave himself zero out of 10 in the job so far.Interview tonight on @BBCSportsound

 

@richardwinton Aye. Still learning how it all works up here, but very, very focused on what he wants to do. Hard to get under his skin

 

@mcgowan_stephen @BBCTomEnglish Boydy's next column: 'You heard it here first, Ian'

 

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Glad it's English doing the interview. Despite being a spineless prick in the past, he's the BBC's most likely employee to actually construct a reasonably in depth interview.

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...a bit disco

Good stuff on the whole.

 

Comes across like a continental coach but, **** me, he went down in my estimation when he started a reply with "Yeah, for sure..."

 

:seething:

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"Without winning, everything else is a waste of time"

I wonder if folk on here will call him deluded or having a sense of entitlement, like they do with posters who have the same attitude.

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Good stuff on the whole.

 

Comes across like a continental coach but, **** me, he went down in my estimation when he started a reply with "Yeah, for sure..."

 

:seething:

There was a tiny touch of the Schteeve Mclarens in there too ...
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Do you think you're qualified to manage a football club seeing as you never played the game ?

 

Don't you think you're too young to manage a football club ?

 

What do you say about the comments from Boyd etc. ?

 

How much influence has Levein got in picking the team ?

 

Think that about covers the "in-depth" interview

 

You've named that tune in one!

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...a bit disco
When cutting about Edinburgh, Hearts head coach Ian Cathro tends to wear a hat, mostly, he says to disguise his "forthcoming baldness", a follicle challenge - looking at his bonce, it's far from a crisis, it has to be said - to go with the football project he has taken on at Tynecastle.
 
Maybe the cap fits in another sense. For a man whose appointment caused such a hubbub, Cathro is not exactly high on the radar of the Edinburgh public.
 
Nobody has recognised him on the street, nobody has picked him out as the Hearts boss that everybody in the media went doolally about when he was appointed five games ago. "I'm pretty anonymous out there," he says. "That's the way I like it. I like being anonymous away from football."
 
Cathro is in the John Robertson Lounge at Tynecastle, the pitch to his back. The new structure that will be built up and over this soon-to-be demolished stand is beginning to take shape. There's a lot going on. Builders everywhere.
 
He's supposed to be a builder, too. Of sorts. Hearts have played five games on his watch and have won just one of them, with one draw and three defeats. He gives himself a mark out of 10 so far. "A big fat zero in a lot of ways," he says. "Maybe that's unfair, and a bit tongue-in-cheek. Things could have been better. We've made some mistakes. Some of them were collective, some of them were mine. We're just getting started."
 
Cathro has his fans and he has his critics. We know about the soap opera that unfolded around him when he was announced as Robbie Neilson's successor, a madcap flurry of analysis of a guy that very few of us actually knew a whole lot about.
 
Here he is, though. Wednesday afternoon, relaxed, using his favourite word - "work" - over and over. Are Hearts underperforming so far? "Yes, we should have more points from the five games." Have the losses impacted on his confidence? "A straight no. I focus on the work. If our work is good, the wins will come. And it will be good. I know very clearly where we want to go. We won't veer off path."
 
We won't dwell on Kilmarnock's Kris Boyd and the laptop coach stuff. Everybody has had a belly-full of that already. One question: what did he make of it? "I have to tell the truth, I didn't pay any attention to it," he responds. "Everybody outside my house was [talking about it] but nobody inside my house was too concerned. These things go on. I think people will learn, through time, that it would take an awful lot more to knock me off track."
 
Cathro, in case you've been hiding underground for a month, is 30-years-old and has packed a lot into his career. A youth coach at Dundee United, then lured to Rio Ave in Portugal where he was assistant to his great mentor, Nuno Santo, onwards to Valencia, where with Santo as boss they finished fourth in La Liga and made the Champions League. After that, he went to Newcastle as a coach under Steve McClaren and, then, Rafa Benitez.
 
Quite a CV for the new Hearts head coach, who, depending on your pundit preference is either a very shrewd appointment or an ill-equipped, over-promoted, oddball.
 
There's no getting away from the fascination of his back story. Santo and Benitez are characters he has learned from when it comes to handling challenging situations. "Both Nuno and Rafa deal with those things well," says Cathro. "You'd probably look to Rafa because he's lived through more of them. He's had a real stark contrast of experiences. He's not always been one of the top managers in the world.
 
"You reach a point where a combination of knowledge and experience brings comfort and calmness and clarity and those are the things that allow him to make good decisions more often than not. From them, I learned how to be a coach, I learned how to be a manager. From Nuno, I learned a little bit of how to be a man.
 
"Leaving home, going to Portugal, not a word of Portuguese, a young guy, 24 or 25 at the time. Not an awful lot of life experience. Probably more football experience than life experience at that point. Every aspect of life there demanded that you grow up. That was a very valuable thing.
 
"I've never accepted being told that life should be like this, you do these things and that'll be you and everything will be fine. I've never been comfortable with that idea. I think I've always had bigger and stronger aspirations and a belief that with work we can do anything we want. I've probably given some evidence [at Rio Ave, Valencia and Newcastle] that that's true and, naturally, when you surpass some challenges then you believe you can keep going. I'm just going to keep going."
 
It's a painfully early moment in his time at Hearts, but plenty has happened already. A poor performance at Ibrox, a lucky point at home to Partick Thistle, a 2-0 lead that turned into a 3-2 loss at Dundee, a 4-0 shellacking of Boyd's Killie and a passive defeat at home to Aberdeen. On Sunday, there's a Scottish Cup tie against Raith Rovers, who might as well run out in maroon such is the ex-Hearts influence running through the place. Men on a mission, you might say.
 
A cup run? The lack of one was a stick that was regularly used on Neilson. "Listen, on Sunday, we want to win the first 15 minutes, then the next 15, then the 15 after that," Cathro says. "We don't want to play well for the sake of playing well. Without winning, everything else is a waste of time. All of us want to get to the same place."
 
He knows that Hearts supporters can be among the most demanding in the country, but he smiles at that. Cathro is either a very good actor or else he is utterly at home with the burden of expectation at Tynecastle.
 
"We want this," he says. "I want pressure, the players want pressure. Sometimes the environment has to be there to push you. We want to achieve things of significance here and not just feel comfortable and get a little pat on the back."
 
After the Aberdeen game he made a comment that might have jarred with the Jambos. He congratulated his players for getting to half-time at 0-0. Did they deserve applause for that? "There's a context," he explains. "It probably should have been 4-0 Aberdeen. In the opening part of that game we all know we didn't win that battle and we suffered. We all want to play well, but what we must have is the willingness to suffer and stay alive. We were suffering but we stayed alive and that's the backdrop to that.
 
"The Dundee game, I don't think you find games like that too often. Momentum swung and in matches like that we need to do whatever we need to do to stop the tidal wave coming over us. We didn't and we suffered because of it. What did it give us? It gave us a slap in the face. You learn the lessons and get better."
 
Players are coming and going at a fair old rate. Four out, four in so far. Hearts still look short at centre-half and centre-forward, an observation that Cathro doesn't argue with. There might be more business done, but he won't be distraught if there's not.
 
He's brought in Malaury Martin, a 28-year-old French midfielder, Aaron Hughes, the 37-year-old Northern Irish defender, Andraz Struna, a 27-year-old Slovakian full-back and Leonard Sowah, another full-back, 24, signed from Hamilton.
 
"Malo brings experience and an understanding of football in a similar way that I understand it," says the Hearts head coach.
 
"He's a little bit more offensive in the midfield. Aaron gives us a grown man with fantastic experience at the highest level. We have a couple more grown men in the team. That was one of the things we wanted to address."
 
What does he think Hearts fans make of him? "I'm sure that's quite varied just now," he responds. "The only thing that's important is that they come and join in this early part of the ride because I wouldn't want them to miss out this bit and only join in the later stage. We're going in a certain direction and I want us to all go together.
 
"The support is one of the reasons why I want to be here. This club has a life, a power. I want football to matter to people - and it matters here."
 
There was talk, pre-Mark Warburton, that he had a chance to go to Rangers. "I wouldn't use those words exactly," he adds. "There were conversations, but I wouldn't linger on that. No. This is the place."
 

 

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alwaysthereinspirit

What is with Scottish football pundits and their hard on with this guys age and his non playing career.

"can he lead men" 

Give it a rest.

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Seymour M Hersh

"There was talk, pre-Mark Warburton, that he had a chance to go to Rangers. "I wouldn't use those words exactly," he adds. "There were conversations, but I wouldn't linger on that. No. This is the place."

 

:glorious:  :verysmug:

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Rudolf's Mate

Wow! That's a great interview. The more this guy talks the more you totally believe in him. I was there already but he's got a way with words!

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Listened to the interview in the car on the way home and got to say I was very impressed. I liked what IC had to say a lot, as I did with the comments from Tom English and Derek Ferguson.

 

I still feel we shouldn't judge IC too much until next season as he's got a bit of a mess to sort out, but I'm confident he's the right man to do so successfully.

 

I also felt a sense of pride at the comments about our fans being very demanding, despite many on here moaning about this regularly. As IC and English said, football matters to Hearts fans and we aren't shy in letting the team/club know that. Quite right too.

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Would also add that he came across a having plenty of personality, something that some pundits said he was lacking.

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All roads lead to Gorgie

"Without winning, everything else is a waste of time"

I would have that painted on the exit from the home dressing room. Really like his focus and feel he craves success here !

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I'm liking the cut of ICs gib.

Only a win will do on Sunday though. No question about that.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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tartofmidlothian

"We won't dwell on Kilmarnock's Kris Boyd and the laptop coach stuff. Everybody has had a belly-full of that already. One question: what did he make of it? "I have to tell the truth, I didn't pay any attention to it," he responds. "Everybody outside my house was [talking about it] but nobody inside my house was too concerned. These things go on. I think people will learn, through time, that it would take an awful lot more to knock me off track."

 

:yas:

 

Every word of that written interview is great. If the guy lives up to a tenth of it he'll be a special manager.

 

I loved his point about more grown men in the squad, we've all been saying it and I'm glad he's noticed too.

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tartofmidlothian

"He knows that Hearts supporters can be among the most demanding in the country, but he smiles at that. Cathro is either a very good actor or else he is utterly at home with the burden of expectation at Tynecastle.

 

"We want this," he says. "I want pressure, the players want pressure. Sometimes the environment has to be there to push you. We want to achieve things of significance here and not just feel comfortable and get a little pat on the back."

 

:yas: again.

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Not a cliche to be heard anywhere. He's going to be great for hearts.

He's rewriting the cliche book unfortunately the thickos wont understand it ;):lol:

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Brilliant interview.  His desire to win.  His desire to take Hearts to a higher level.  The way he rises above all the Boyd nonsense.  Forget Rangers - "This is the place."

 

I also smiled at his repetition of the phrase "grown men":

"Aaron gives us a grown man with fantastic experience at the highest level. We have a couple more grown men in the team. That was one of the things we wanted to address."

 

For someone who paid no attention whatsoever to Boyd's comments it is the perfect riposte:

"Quite simply, from my experience, I don?t think Cathro has the character to be able to deal with grown men in a dressing-room environment." - Kris Boyd, the Sun, 10th December 2016

 

And my favourite bit - his message to the fans: "The only thing that's important is that they come and join in this early part of the ride because I wouldn't want them to miss out this bit and only join in the later stage. We're going in a certain direction and I want us to all go together."

?Total confidence in himself and the set up and what Hearts can achieve.  Of course he's going to have to do it now.  But it's the kind of leadership style that I've wanted to see for years - and if he can get the players thinking the same way, we are in for exciting times ahead.

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If you're not onboard it's time to get onboard. Something special is happening at Hearts right now.

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