The Hearts CEO Last Night Echoed The Words Of Many Celtic Fans And This Blog.

Last night, the CEO of Hearts gave an astonishing interview in which he laid out the rationale behind the sacking of Robbie Neilson.

I applauded that decision on Twitter when the story broke. I hoped that it was a move born of ambition, something from a board that simply was not prepared to sit and accept being third place as Neilson made it clear he had.

It was obvious that the Hearts board was disturbed by comments, which this site highlighted, where Neilson, speaking of that third place, stated that “every club outside Glasgow would want to be where we are.”

Yeah, out of the running. Out of the race. Why would any club accept that? Why would his own club put up with it indefinitely?

So it’s music to my ears that they were concerned about those remarks and the idea that underpins them. But perhaps more importantly – and this was something I did not expect – the man laid out the specifics behind the decision … and one of them was Neilson’s record against ourselves, but more to the point against the club across the city and the “bizarre” failure to “lay a glove on them.”

“I’ll tell you what I do think,” he said. “We should be performing better when we play them, (Ibrox) in particular. I’ve seen us have good performances against Celtic. In fact, I would say in the last few weeks our best football was the first-half at Celtic Park, where I thought we were dynamic and really got in about them. But I haven’t seen us do that against (Ibrox) and I don’t know why. We don’t seem to lay a glove on (them) for some bizarre reason and we have to start doing that.”

That he deems this worthy of a mention is telling and damning and echoes the nagging suspicion on this site that they had a manager over there who was not terribly interested in talking points off the club from Ibrox. How many times did we highlight odd tactical changes? Weird team selections? A general lack of application which was not displayed against us?

To a lot of us, there was nothing “bizarre” about it at all, not at any point. It made perfect sense when you looked at it right.

In my view Neilson sabotaged his own team at least twice prior to matches against them, games where everyone thought they had a realistic chance. Prior to the hammering they got at home even the BBC panellists were appalled at the changes he’d made and knew within five minutes of the game kicking off that Hearts were in serious trouble.

Neilson’s record against them is shocking. His record against us is shocking as well, but as the Hearts CEO says, they at least competed against us and made us work for our results. But everything this site said in our last piece on Neilson – the settling for mediocrity, the third place starting to slip away, his record of having dropped points in ten games (at the time) outside of the ones against the Glasgow teams – all seems to have been on the minds of their board.

I hope we get a better Hearts next season. I hope we get a better Hibs and Aberdeen. Because the Ibrox club is facing a summer of such tumult that I think they’ll be there for the taking in the early part of the campaign, and these clubs will all have opportunities.

The Tynecastle board is getting its act together.

They will never be my favourite club, but on this I genuinely do wish them well. We need other clubs in this league to get their act together and put up some kind of fight. That will keep us on our toes, and that will keep us strong.