Ian Cathro - The Athletic

[Bungalow Bill]

Ian Cathro sparked a culture war in Scotland — then wrote a book. Now he's ready to manage again

‘O Meu Jogo’

Ian Cathro places the book on the table. ‘My game’ — that’s the translation from Portuguese — is not for sale. The author wrote it for himself as much as anyone.

“I spent five years working on this,” Cathro says.

“I suppose it’s a personal project and a way of committing your thoughts, checking up on your convictions and testing yourself. You can’t separate these things because I don’t think there is a ‘you’ as a coach and a ‘you’ as a person, because then it starts to smell a bit like bull***t to me. The guys who are the absolute best at what they do, it’s because they’re authentic.”

The 134-page A4 book includes tactical diagrams and innovations — the benefits of playing centre-backs on their unnatural side among them — as well as off-the-field topics, such as the importance of family.

“I don’t know if I’m gonna win,” Cathro says. “I don’t know if I’m gonna lose. But this has got everything about how the team is gonna work, how we’re gonna train, how we’re going to adapt, how I view football, how we view the development of the club.”

He looks up and there is the hint of a smile. “Was it entirely for that reason that I wrote it? It was probably a little bit of therapy for me too.”

Cathro rarely gives interviews (I’ve been chasing this one for longer than it took him to write his book) and has a fascinating backstory.

Aged 37, he has been coaching for more than 20 years, going back to when he was a secondary-school pupil in his hometown of Dundee, sitting in a business management class and visualising passages of play for the training sessions he would take later that day. Coaching quickly became his raison d’etre. By his admission, he was obsessed.

His school teachers, Cathro says, “just accepted it”.

But Scottish football didn’t.

In December 2016, Cathro was named head coach of Hearts in the Scottish Premiership. He was 30 years old at the time and, according to Cathro’s Wikipedia page, the appointment “caused some debate” within Scottish football.

“Yeah, that’s apt,” Cathro says, laughing.

“Caused some debate” is quite the understatement. Hearts’ decision to turn to Cathro provoked outrage among some ex-players in particular.

A 29-second clip of Stephen Craigan, the former Motherwell defender, arguing with Chris Sutton, live on television, gives you an insight into the strength of feeling.

“He’s never had a job before!” Craigan said, his face contorted in anger as Sutton responded by accusing the man sitting next to him of jealousy.

Cathro, for the record, has never had a job outside of football. Not only that but before he had spent the previous four years coaching in the top flight in Portugal and Spain under Nuno Espirito Santo, and at Newcastle United with Rafael Benitez.

He had not, however, been a manager or played the game professionally and the latter was clearly a problem for some people in Scotland. As was the fact that Cathro was so young and — brace yourself for this next bit — he did some of his work on a laptop.

Kris Boyd, the former Rangers and Scotland striker, used all that and more to mock Cathro in a newspaper column published 48 hours before he was confirmed as Hearts manager. The opening line read: “He’s probably not been this excited since FIFA 17 came out on PlayStation.”

There was plenty more where that came from, rooted in personal criticism — “crass demeaning of someone who deliberately ploughed his own furrow” is how Ewan Murray, the Guardian newspaper’s Scottish football correspondent, described it at the time.

Cathro shakes his head. “The moment when I thought this has gone properly crazy was when somebody told me that someone had said, ‘He didn’t invent the light bulb’.

“What have I done to suggest that I did that?”

“I had the misfortune of being the example of this thing that may disturb job opportunities for other people — this culture war that maybe hadn’t quite made its way to Scottish football, and I became the thing they needed to defeat.”

If that was the case, “they” succeeded. Cathro was sacked at the start of the following season. He lasted seven months.

Seven years later, he is contemplating returning to management.

It is tempting to say that time has been a good healer in that respect, but using that phrase implies Cathro was hurt by what happened at Hearts.

He was angry rather than hurt — really angry — and also annoyed with himself for being so impatient in the first place.

Growing up in Dundee, Cathro “wasn’t the super-talented kid” who was on the path to football stardom. He was part of the youth setup at Forfar Athletic and Brechin City, and suspects he might have been able to carve out a career as a lower-league player in Scotland. A knee injury prompted a rethink and, with the encouragement of his school PE department, Cathro fell into coaching.

His first session as a coach left him feeling underwhelmed. After the second, he was hooked.

“I just became obsessed,” Cathro says. “I was probably a bit peeved about how I trained as a kid. The ability to express yourself was really limited. There were maybe four or five things you could do in a football game: you get in their faces, you win the first battle, you don’t take risks, ‘If in doubt put it out’, ‘Turn them early’. And I was the young kid who was going: ‘Nah, that can’t be it’.”

In the words of Jack Souttar, whose sons Harry and John were coached by Cathro before going on to play professionally, the young Scot was “a bit of a maverick”.

Cathro smiles. “I was probably on a bit of a crusade, and the whole thing was proving to these kids and everybody around them…”

He pauses for a moment. “It was driven from — and this probably speaks to some of the things that we’ll end up talking about later — I’d never had a good relationship with people in Scottish football. I wasn’t going around telling everybody what you’re doing is wrong. But the fact that I was doing something different was, subconsciously, telling everybody that I think what you’re doing is wrong. That wasn’t my intention. I was just doing what I wanted to do.”

At ‘Cathro Clinic’, the private football academy he set up in Dundee, the focus was on individual player development. Cathro prioritised touches of the ball, encouraged boys to play with freedom, set them skill-based challenges to incorporate into their game, and urged them to reach for the stars.

At the same time, Cathro had his own dreams. Although Dundee United, the Scottish Premiership club on Cathro’s doorstep, were impressed by his coaching and gave him a role in their youth department, the ambition was always to work overseas.

Two meetings with Portuguese coaches in the space of 12 months proved pivotal.

The first was with Andre Villas-Boas in 2010, not long after he had taken over as Porto’s manager.

“That was a turning point,” Cathro says. “I left Porto’s training ground and decided I’m not a youth coach anymore.”

But the “Sliding Doors moment”, to borrow Cathro’s description, came the following summer when he attended a UEFA B Licence course at Largs, in Ayrshire, where he was in the company of some big names in Scottish football (Duncan Ferguson and Paul Hartley among them) but ended up hitting it off with a former Portuguese goalkeeper by the name of Nuno.

“I looked like the 24-year-old who nobody knows,” Cathro recalls. “But in my mind, I was the most experienced coach on the course, and I had done the most coaching of everybody. I probably thought I was the best one on the course and that probably came across — not when we’re sitting eating our lunch, but when they say, ‘Go out and take a session’, I spoke to people the way that I would. So there’s a big contrast probably, and that can be difficult. And I know that’s what got Nuno’s attention.

“He saw this quiet kid, expecting nothing, and then he goes and does his session and all of a sudden, ‘What the hell?’. And it was a combination of the way that I was, how I would work and speak — the assertiveness, but also that the exercises were different. He looked at what I was doing and thought, ‘That looks like a high-level training session. The other stuff looks like what you do on the course to get through the course’. And that’s when we started to speak.”

As much as Nuno was impressed with Cathro’s session, he had some constructive criticism for him too. “He said to me, ‘Are you maybe a bit arrogant?’.”

And was he?

“I don’t know,” Cathro replies. “But I kept my distance (with others) — there was something in the air.

“Maybe I did have an arrogance and Nuno prodded that straight away. That was probably the bit that made me most interested to be having more conversation with him. With every bit of the course that passed, we just spent more time talking, and that changed my life in the end.”

A year later, Cathro took a phone call from Nuno saying he was going into management and asking if he wanted to work with him. It was at Rio Ave, a Portuguese Primeira Liga club. Cathro couldn’t pack his bag quickly enough — and then reality hit.

“I vividly remember walking down the steps — the good old Ryanair steps — putting my foot on the ground and thinking, ‘I don’t know one word of Portuguese. I have no idea where I’m going. Do I take the next step?’.”

Adapting to his new life was interesting. There were formal language lessons in a classroom alongside future Atletico Madrid goalkeeper Jan Oblak, while the football jargon was learned at Nuno’s home, where Cathro was given a roof over his head. “I remember sitting on his balcony preparing training sessions, and every now and then I’d go, ’How do you say that?’”

If Cathro was assessing players that he knew little about, it seems inevitable that they were doing the same with him. Did he sense that?

“Yeah, and I think that was normal,” Cathro says. “There were probably people in the club doing that as well, and I understand it. Why would a Portuguese club appoint a mid-twenties Scottish coach to the staff? That’s something for Nuno to explain and it was difficult for him to explain. They’re not going to know anything about me. So they just see the profile and make a judgement based on that. And then they know he doesn’t speak the language. And then you’re weighing those things up and they’ve got to be going, ‘That’s strange’. But that just passed.”

Cathro ended up thriving, so much so that Nuno described him as a “genius”. By the end of the first season, Cathro was fluent in Portuguese and, more significantly, an integral part of a coaching team that led Rio Ave to two domestic cup finals and European qualification.

Nuno’s stock was rising fast and when he took over at Valencia in the summer of 2014, it was inevitable that Cathro would join him. A fourth-place finish in La Liga followed, earning a place in the Champions League in the 2015-16 season, but Cathro and Nuno were about to part.

With his father seriously ill, Cathro wanted to be closer to Dundee, prompting him to take a coaching job with Newcastle United, initially under the management of Steve McClaren and later working with Benitez. “It was a personal decision, which became a great professional option, which is probably why it doesn’t look like a personal decision,” Cathro says.

All the while, the desire to be a manager burned fiercely.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but hearing Cathro’s backstory, it seems strange to think he chose to take his first job as a head coach in Scotland, the country he had been so keen to leave behind in search of a football culture that aligned with his ideology.

Picture the path of least resistance and Cathro was travelling in totally the opposite direction.

He listens and nods. “I think the exact same way,” Cathro says.

“Fundamentally, it was impatience.

“And this is probably the hardest bit to make sense of… obviously, if the aim of the game is to prepare a career and make smart decisions so you just go success, success, success, success, success, Hearts was a huge mistake. If that’s the question, of course I regret it. I should have never worked in Scottish football. It wasn’t the appropriate environment at that time, it may never be the appropriate environment.

“But if the question is different, ‘Do you regret it from the point of view of how it’s helped you improve and get yourself to a point where maybe the path is: success, learn, hit the floor, figure it out, step forward, focus, grow?’, then I can’t say that I regret doing it.”

Cathro won five, drew four and lost 13 of his 22 league matches in charge. In short, his record wasn’t good enough.

In his mind, Cathro was ready to manage at that level but he wasn’t equipped, he says, to deal with all the noise.

“I couldn’t figure out how to process that. That took me off track. I was trying to navigate that and then you stop navigating the thing that you’re actually good at. That very quickly made me very angry, to the point where if there was a way out early on, I would have taken it.”

It says everything that Cathro’s appointment created such a stir in Scotland that the reaction to the reaction became a story.

He was, in the words of the New York Times journalist Rory Smith, “Scottish football’s great experiment”.

Some people didn’t want to wait for the results though.

Aside from being obsessed with mentioning Cathro’s laptop and making the FIFA 17 jibe, Boyd described a man he had met on a coaching course but never seen in a work environment as “way, way out of his depth”.

Jamie Fullarton, another former Scottish Premiership player, questioned Cathro’s social skills and whether he even coached at Newcastle (Matt Ritchie, who played for Newcastle and talked about the quality of Cathro’s training sessions, was probably better qualified on that subject).

As for Craigan, he was so irate about Cathro getting the Hearts job that he rowed with Sutton and started talking about light bulbs and Thomas Edison.

Did Cathro know that it was going to be like this? “I should have anticipated some of it, but no, I didn’t know that when I went in,” he says.

“It was 99 per cent bull***t to the point where, if I had money, I would have sued a couple of people because some of it was defamation. And then, afterwards, the anger that I felt continued a little bit because I’m thinking, ‘There’s other people. He’s losing games as well. What’s being said about this lad?’ — not that I wanted somebody else to get attacked.

“If I lose and the team’s a mess — and sometimes it was — that criticism is absolutely fine. But some of the other sketch-show ridicule and absolute nonsense because they obviously felt safe enough to come at me — no, that’s not cool.”

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Cathro recognises his own errors too. He went through a period of self-reflection after losing his job at Hearts and some of that made for uncomfortable viewing, both in terms of the football on the pitch and how he came across off it.

“The bit that was wholly on me was I had a couple of really, really bad moments with the press. And I’m sure there will be memes forever, which is fine because they can then get swung around to laughs in the future,” Cathro says. “But I struggled with that just because I couldn’t put the anger to the side. It kind of freezes you in some ways and then it’s not really you that comes across. The real version of me is doing everything I can to hold the anger in. Maybe you’re better off just letting the anger out.

“The people who actually knew me would look at some things and go: ‘Who’s that? What’s happened? Where are you? Just be yourself, will you?’. But I was so, so angry and you can’t function like that. Even having this conversation now, it’s really empowering.”

As for how Hearts performed, Cathro sounds more disappointed by that than anything else. “I didn’t even recognise some of the football, and that’s the hardest bit,” he says. “So if there’s critiques from that at a certain point, those are fair. But it goes back to that point — I wasn’t ready to deal with being in the middle of a culture war.”

Cathro lost his job at Hearts but he never lost his sense of humour.

Asked whether he was married when he was managing, Cathro laughs and replies: “No, I waited until I’d been ridiculed to such an extent that if she was to say yes, it’s a pretty solid yes!

“So a couple of weeks after leaving (Hearts) we went to Valencia, we hired bikes and after doing a couple of loops in the park, I stopped and proposed. I thought if she says yeah now she’s gonna stay. So that was that.”

Cathro is a father as well as a husband now and that, allied to another five years’ coaching experience, means that he has a much more rounded view of football and life. Less intensity, more clarity.

“I’ve got an off switch now and I enjoy pushing it,” he says. “I work smarter. Everything’s more clear to me. I know how I’m gonna be, how I’m gonna work. Football’s not gonna give me sleepless nights. I’m not gonna be that guy.”

His rehabilitation after Hearts started, and continued, alongside a familiar face. After taking 12 months out to reset, Cathro was reunited with Nuno at Wolves in 2018, where they spent three years together, finishing seventh in the Premier League in successive seasons, qualifying for Europe and coaching a team that produced some exhilarating football.

When Cathro thinks back to that period, his eyes light up. He talks about the passing and movement patterns in such detail that you could be forgiven for thinking that he has just come off the training ground with Diogo Jota, Ruben Neves and Raul Jimenez. “It was special. Really special,” Cathro says.

The same can’t be said for their time together at Tottenham Hotspur, where it felt destined to go wrong from day one — or maybe that should be ‘day 72’, when Spurs ended an exhaustive managerial search by turning to Nuno. He was sacked after four months.

“You turn up on set but you’re in the wrong movie,” Cathro says. “I imagine everybody would probably reach the same conclusion. Every time there’s been connection and alignment, Nuno’s only had success, but it didn’t fit (at Spurs).”

It would be fair to say that working in the Middle East wasn’t what Cathro had in mind next, but Nuno’s appointment as the manager of Al Ittihad in 2022 took the Portuguese and his staff in that direction. After being sceptical initially, Cathro embraced the opportunity.

“It took me longer to get in the car to go to the airport to fly to Saudi Arabia than what it did to drive down to Enfield (Tottenham’s training ground). Nobody’s hiding that,” Cathro says.

“But nobody owns football. You don’t get to belittle somebody else’s love of football because it’s not a top-five league, or it’s not Western culture.

‘There was a learning process in that for me because I did have that attitude at first. I was probably a bit snobbish — football snobbish — of what I was going into. But that disappeared within three or four weeks.”

Although shade was hard to find on the training ground, success wasn’t; Al Ittihad won the Saudi Pro League in 2023 and Cathro took great satisfaction from seeing how much that title meant to the long-serving staff at the club.

Nuno was dismissed in November, though, and when he took over at Nottingham Forest the following month, Cathro decided to take a break. He had a wife and young daughter to get reacquainted with after his time in Saudi Arabia, a book to finish and a seven-year itch to scratch.

Is management definitely what he is going to do next? “Should what I think is the right opportunity come along, then yeah, I’m at a natural point for that,” Cathro replies.

He picks up his book again from the coffee table. “Like every person on the planet, I’ll have strengths and weaknesses,” Cathro says. “But it’ll be authentic, and there will be nobody more driven to be successful wherever I am.”

[Bungalow Bill]

This was an interesting read. Thought I’d share. Will he be a success as a manager somewhere other than Scotland? 

[briever]

Craigan is a pr!ck though.

[Bungalow Bill]

I do think it’s forgotten. He was 30 years old and failing at a club the size of Hearts. The pressure and stress must have been massive on him. 

[Gizmo]

9 minutes ago, briever said:

Craigan is a pr!ck though.

Totally. It came across as personal, did Craigan not play the "I've got my coaching badges too" line at one point? 

[Go for it 1308]

All I can say is Kris Boyd is a fat arrogant ugly ******* prick scumbag  c*n* 

[Geoff Kilpatrick]

Cathro's fundamental problem was that he had no people skills. I don't question his coaching ability but some people in football suit that role.

[Jim Panzee]

craigan was caretaker manager for motherwell for 2 games. Boyd has never managed? At least Cathro had the balls to take on a top managerial job.

 

at the very least they could've been neutral and taken a 'lets see how it pans out' attitude. 

 

 

[Taffin]

Clearly a very good coach. An absolute slaver as well too.

[GinRummy]

The Scottish football media are a snide bunch.

[Bungalow Bill]

8 minutes ago, Geoff Kilpatrick said:

Cathro's fundamental problem was that he had no people skills. I don't question his coaching ability but some people in football suit that role.

I think he recognises that. 
 

He’s surely done something in this space to improve. 
 

Maybe players just won’t respect him due to his lack of pro playing record. Aware there are exceptions. 

Edited May 7 by Bungalow Bill

[Swimmer]

Oh  how I wanted Cathro to succeed! But, we all knew how it would end up!

[TheBigO]

Best of luck to him.  I really hope he makes a great management career.

 

The talking heads who love the jobs for the boys in Scotland really need shut up.  Hey, we just had a mild version of it with Stevie Naismith.  Doesn't have the experience apparently.  He's Stevie bloody Naismith.

 

I always did and still do like that Hearts took a chance on the lad.  It was brave.  Foolish and arrogant of Levein in hindsight, but I want to be a club who try to break the mold - how else you going to do anything special in Scottish football?  Oh aye Stephen Robinson, the chump that he is, probably guarantees to 6 football for you.  Whooopdeshittingdoo.

[Nookie Bear]

A lot made of Boyd’s comments but the reality was that the team was an utter shambles and it was clear Cathro had zero idea how to motivate and inspire a team of players. 

[XB52]

A very good, honest read. Only problem is there is a siren going off in a certain posters head so be prepared

[boag1874]

He was out his depth, took on a job that was way too big for him & ultimately failed miserably. The press were snide ***** during his tenure and took way too much glee in sticking the boot in, it was clearly an attempt to rattle him and the squad, it worked and showed him up as someone who simply doesn't command enough respect to be manager at a club like Hearts.

 

We tried something outside the box and the gamble didn't pay off, the damage was done & shit happens. He's a good coach and maybe with a bit more of an older head on his shoulders will eventually make a decent manager if he can improve his people skills.

[OTT]

I think a brilliant place for Cathro would be the MLS or A-League. Somewhere English speaking, where he can get his ideas across easily and isn't so prone to ridicule. Christ if Nick Montgomery can look like a rockstar in that league, Cathro surely can?

[OTT]

7 minutes ago, Nookie Bear said:

A lot made of Boyd’s comments but the reality was that the team was an utter shambles and it was clear Cathro had zero idea how to motivate and inspire a team of players. 

 

Weirdly I think he would pair well with a Gary Locke type - someone who can gee the players up and motivate them. 

 

From memory, I've heard Jamie Carragher talk about Benítez and he didn't really get involved in the actual management of the players, he was more the tactician and left that side of things to senior players/ the coaching staff. 

 

I think with the right team and the right circumstances he could be successful. 

[A_A wehatethehibs]

He never helped himself with his lack of media training and absolutely embarrassing quotes. Some of the worst I can remember from any individual. “If you take goal posts away, it was competitive” or suchlike, after getting trounced 5-0 is one that hangs in my memory… if you take goal posts, the whole aim of the game, the whole point of a football game, out the equation? 

 

The fact is half the job is about being the public face of the team and talking to the media and the fans. The guy just will never have that side of it. Might manage again and good luck to him. Needs to be in a much smaller lower profile job that’s for sure

[Bull's-eye]

He would have remained in situ for a lot longer if he'd listened to advice and taken criticism from above in the right way.

 

He was fine with the players and i know for a fact they enjoyed his methods.

 

He couldn't manage up though and that was his inevitable downfall.

[I P Knightley]

52 minutes ago, Bungalow Bill said:

This was an interesting read. Thought I’d share. Will he be a success as a manager somewhere other than Scotland? 

Thanks for posting it - as you say; an interesting read. 

 

Cathro recognises the mistake he made in jumping into the Hearts job when he did. He may not have said all of this out loud but my take on it is:

 

* It was a bold move by Levein to go for a highly regarded young coach with a decent track record in doing what he was doing. 

* Hearts (i.e. Levein) needed to prepare the ground for Cathro coming and to do everything they could to settle him into his role, otherwise, it was just a gamble, not a measured risk with mitigations. 

* Levein, with all his experience in and around Scottish football, should have anticipated what might happen to Cathro and should have had a support framework that allowed him to do what he was good at without attracting the venom that would inevitably come his way. 

 

At the time, I did wonder whether the appointment was a product of Levein's vanity ("look at how I can do something no one's ever done before") and that he failed to build that structure around Cathro and the squad to get the best out of the organisation. 

 

Cathro seems to accept that it was a leap too far - without going into much detail on why that was the case. Could his appointment have worked in a different set-up? Could it have worked in a different league? At a lower-profile club? But let's face it, a young lad is offered an exciting position at the JTs... who's not going to be tempted? He needed more guidance - personally and professionally. 

 

Then you've got to add into the mix that Craigan is a prick and that Boyd is a fat, arrogant ugly ******* prick scumbag c*n*. And that while their jobs-for-the-boys mentality is prevalent throughout Scottish football, we're never going to make steps forward. 

 

51 minutes ago, briever said:

Craigan is a pr!ck though.

 

37 minutes ago, Go for it 1308 said:

All I can say is Kris Boyd is a fat arrogant ugly ******* prick scumbag  c*n* 

 

[GrimUpNorth]

1 hour ago, Bungalow Bill said:

This was an interesting read. Thought I’d share. Will he be a success as a manager somewhere other than Scotland? 

Very interesting. Thanks for posting. 

 

It would be interesting to see how he would do now with the club in a better place and with better players. Just wasn't ready at the time for the step up into management 

[periodictabledancer]

He could've been the best coach in the world ( and he clearly has some great attributes to survive the cull at Newcastle and get taken on again by Nuno after his sacking at Hearts) but the board were obviously of the view that communication skills weren't (that) important when they interviewed him (and I'm still not convinced they ever did) 

He came across like a character out of The Fast Show and that car crash interview (after the Hibs game  ?) still gives me nightmares.

And let's not kid oursleves, if he'd been given the Hibs job, fans on here would've roasted him from day one. 

[naeclue]

I thought Cathro was treated brutally. He had ideas, and a coaching track record. The way a bunch of idiots with a fraction of his football intelligence treated him says more about them that it did about Cathro.  
 

In hindsight, he needed someone like Jefferies beside him to run interference and let him learn more about the ugly side of football management.

We were pish and gutless by the end of it, all the same.

 

I wish the guy well, interested to see what happens next.
 

Has Boyd or Craigan had any role whatsoever in coaching or management? 

 

[kila]

31 minutes ago, Bull's-eye said:

He would have remained in situ for a lot longer if he'd listened to advice and taken criticism from above in the right way.

 

He was fine with the players and i know for a fact they enjoyed his methods.

 

He couldn't manage up though and that was his inevitable downfall.

What advice did he ignore from Levein? 

[kingantti1874]

Shame it didn’t work, sure he had a lot of good ideas.  The team looked confused though we had a lot of change which clearly didn’t help.   He also wanst very good at articulating himself in public - shades of Lee Johnson really.

 

hooe he gets another chance 

[briever]

1 hour ago, Gizmo said:

Totally. It came across as personal, did Craigan not play the "I've got my coaching badges too" line at one point? 

 

Which is why he shouts like Ian Paisley every week on TV.

[Bungalow Bill]

I was traveling back from Starks park (like many people on this forum), and I missed his post match interview. To this day I still can’t bring myself to watch it. 

[TheBigO]

42 minutes ago, Bull's-eye said:

He would have remained in situ for a lot longer if he'd listened to advice and taken criticism from above in the right way.

 

He was fine with the players and i know for a fact they enjoyed his methods.

 

He couldn't manage up though and that was his inevitable downfall.

Yep have to say I heard similar re players actually quite liking him and his methods.  Makes sense when his entire ethos is about developing and empowering players.

 

I think we all have to remember he also ripped up a stable squad and brought in one helluva load of shite, which in no uncertain terms was pretty arrogant.  He obv wanted a certain profile of player, but we got uninterested loanees, which was never the recipe.  And as for the quality, well it ranged from Tsolis who talent wise could have been one of the best to wear maroon, to Lenny Sohaw who genuinely may be the worst.  But I don't blame Cathro for this - the blame for this lies squarely at Levein's door.  He should have been saying to keep the squad more or less as was with a wee addition here and there until summer.  His own arrogance got the better of him there.

 

The media thing was utterly disgusting.  Like Cathro alludes to, there were other managers losing.  I mean recently was Jim Goodwin personally slandered while being totally shite at Aberdeen, or the nonsense that came out of Lee Johnson's mouth while Hibs were no better than slightly pisher than usual?  No opinion pieces about his app were there?  But these are football men who played the game and earnt their place eh!?  A lad who has devoted his entire being to coaching and learnt from some of the best.  Na, never played on a cold night in Dingwall, so he's a joker.  Arseholes.

[Chaps]

Biggest mistake was ripping up a decent side sitting in 2nd after Robbie left and signing a load of crap in January.

 

 

[Ex member of the SaS]

54 minutes ago, Bull's-eye said:

He would have remained in situ for a lot longer if he'd listened to advice and taken criticism from above in the right way.

 

He was fine with the players and i know for a fact they enjoyed his methods.

 

He couldn't manage up though and that was his inevitable downfall.

I disagree, I feel it was interference from Levein that ruined him. Left to get on with it and he could have done well as the players liked what he was trying to do.

[Jim Panzee]

6 minutes ago, TheBigO said:

The media thing was utterly disgusting.  Like Cathro alludes to, there were other managers losing.  I mean recently was Jim Goodwin personally slandered while being totally shite at Aberdeen, or the nonsense that came out of Lee Johnson's mouth while Hibs were no better than slightly pisher than usual?  No opinion pieces about his app were there?  But these are football men who played the game and earnt their place eh!?  A lad who has devoted his entire being to coaching and learnt from some of the best.  Na, never played on a cold night in Dingwall, so he's a joker.  Arseholes.

 

52 minutes ago, I P Knightley said:

 their jobs-for-the-boys mentality is prevalent throughout Scottish football, we're never going to make steps forward. 

 

correct.

 

Heaven forbid anyone / club tries something different.

 

Christ, the media were more fixated on Stendel's uncombed hair than querying why he kept playing pereira in goals.

[A_A wehatethehibs]

5 minutes ago, Bungalow Bill said:

I was traveling back from Starks park (like many people on this forum), and I missed his post match interview. To this day I still can’t bring myself to watch it. 

That was the moment I realised he was absolutely clear cut not the right appointment. That was in fecking January. It should’ve been terminated around then, or February. Bizarrely, we kept him going another 7 or 8 months and it never really showed any signs of life at all, other than a couple of fluke wins. 

[TheBigO]

Just now, Jim Panzee said:

 

 

correct.

 

Heaven forbid anyone / club tries something different.

 

Christ, the media were more fixated on Stendel's uncombed hair than querying why he kept playing pereira in goals.

HAha, I know, right!  And his English, which was perfectly fine too.  But he wasn't Scottish or Norn Irish, so he was all scary for them.

 

It's actually the same with VR in a way.  Look Vlad was MENTAL but at the end of the day, the abuse he and our players took and so much of it complete double standards.  It was disgusting.  No one in the media particularly up in arms about all the Americans currently threatening the existance of some of our clubs - but with VR it was full on battle stations.  The wee man simply didn't take it from them which was ace.

[RustyRightPeg]

Felt sorry for Cathro in truth. He wasn’t ready, but took a leap of faith (both sides did) and it didn’t work out, sometimes that happens. I’ll never complain about that.
 

Good luck to him, that’s a good interview. Hopefully he does go on and have an even better career than he has already. It’s an impressive CV, that’s for sure.  
 

 

 

[Carl Fredrickson]

Cathro held talks with The Rangers before Warburton was appointed. Would the media have went as apeshit if was their manager? 

 

I dont think so. 

 

 

[A_A wehatethehibs]

Just now, Carl Fredrickson said:

Cathro held talks with The Rangers before Warburton was appointed. Would the media have went as apeshit if was their manager? 

 

I dont think so. 

 

 

He wouldn’t have lasted a month as Rangers manager. Image some of the tripe he came out with: “pretty even game apart from the goals” after getting shat on 5-0 by Celtic at home as rangers manager 🤣 would’ve been literally run out of Glasgow with torch and pitchforks within a month 

[Bungalow Bill]

Maybe he needed a more experienced assistant than Austin Macphee?

[stirlo]

It was a crazy decision by the club to appoint him. Being a manager is about far more than coaching and how anyone thought he was qualified to be manager of HMFC is surprising to say the least.

[colinmorewasgash]

It was crazy decision in hindsight but boydy laptop comment came back to bite him for one game at least with his greatest moment as our manager hearts 4 sevco 1.

[N Lincs Jambo]

3 minutes ago, colinmorewasgash said:

It was crazy decision in hindsight but boydy laptop comment came back to bite him for one game at least with his greatest moment as our manager hearts 4 sevco 1.

 

It bit him on the arse twice. The game you mention plus the 4-0 Killie game when Boyd was still playing for Killie. "Effed by a laptop, you're getting effed by a laptop!" 😂

[RobboM]

Not disagreeing with anyone who said he needed to be emptied BUT my memory of him was an early game up at Dundee. The first half from Hearts was jaw droppingly good.  Scored early and created a hutch load of gilt edged chances but only led 1-0 at HT. Dundee regrouped second half and eventually won it 3-2. Cathro needed early wins to convince fans and players that he had something about him. It didn't happen and the confidence ebbed from him, the players and supporters.

[Bull's-eye]

1 hour ago, Ex member of the SaS said:

I disagree, I feel it was interference from Levein that ruined him. Left to get on with it and he could have done well as the players liked what he was trying to do.

 

Thats because you make stuff up just to look important or have an argument or both.

[deejtee]

Heard plenty negatives about him but so what. His time managing Hearts is all that matters. He was absolutely crap and  I would eat my hat if he is ever a successful manager in a decent league.

PS I don't own a hat so it's an empty promise🤠

[Lone Striker]

In that OP interview, he comes across like David Brent's & Lee Johnson's love-child.    A bit arrogant, weirdly mysterious, but  mainly full of b*llsh*t. 

 

 tbf to him, neither he or McPhee "came from football"  in the traditional way  - so it was always an uphill struggle to become accepted by managers who were ex-pros.     

 

No idea if he is/was a good coach on the training pitch, but having him doing the team-talk ahead of a match seems a step too far.

 

 

[been here before]

Almost felt sorry for him by the end. No doubt a decent coach who seems highly regarded and seems a nice enough boy but never ever a manager.

 

That interview after the draw in the cup up at Raith still gives me shivers. He's from Dundee ffs, English isnt even his first language.

[Ex member of the SaS]

33 minutes ago, Bull's-eye said:

 

Thats because you make stuff up just to look important or have an argument or both.

Bollox. Everyone watched Levein interfere. Besides I am important( to some ) and I don't argue with idiots.

[A_A wehatethehibs]

Just now, Ex member of the SaS said:

Bollox. Everyone watched Levein interfere. Besides I am important( to some ) and I don't argue with idiots.

 Levein didn’t “interfere” mate, but simply tried desperately to help a totally out his depth floundering young coach. Levein must have known very very early on he had ****ed up badly with that appointment. After that he spent 6 months tryinf to save him which was the biggest mistake of his life and ****ed our club up massively 

[DG_HMFC]

3 hours ago, GinRummy said:

The Scottish football media are a snide bunch.

 

Horrible bunch of c**nts.

 

Pitchforks we're out almost immediately because he was an easy target.

 

Felt a bit sorry for him. An excellent coach, just never a manager. May well be ready for a managerial job now.

[Bazzas right boot]

If he hadn't ripped up a decent team and implemented his ideas gradually it might have worked.

But he just changed too much, too quickly. 

 

The media assault on him was ridiculous. 

Worse still, some of our own bought it and joined in with it.