DOCTOR'S ORDERS

IT CAME as a surprise to many people at Hearts to hear Valdas Ivanauskas has been suffering from ill-health.

I hope his fortnight's break will benefit a good work colleague, friend, respected football coach and gentleman.

Valdas and I rarely speak about health issues and it was clearly something he kept to himself in recent weeks but I know being in charge of the Hearts team had taken its toll.

In the summer, he told me a thorough end-of-season medical he'd had in Lithuania revealed the previous few months had had a significant effect on his health.

Valdas was advised to look after himself but, of course, medical matters are rarely discussed in depth out with our immediate families and it hadn't been mentioned since.

Naturally, I hope Valdas recovers quickly and gets back to work as Hearts continue to try to meet challenges that lie ahead this season.

It has been an eventful few days since our 2-0 defeat against Kilmarnock prompted a meeting at Tynecastle involving Valdas, Eduard Malofeev, Anatoliy Korobochka and Alex Koslovski, one of the advisers to our football consultants.

At that stage, I don't know if calls had been made to Vladimir Romanov but on Saturday night I was told Valdas was going back to Lithuania the following day for discussions and that Malofeev had been put in temporary charge of team affairs.

I first met him, Korobochka and Koslovski on Romanov's boat in the South of France in the summer when Malofeev was put in place as sporting director with Korobochka coming in as a consultant.

Malofeev and Koslovski have been at the club most of the time since, although the former returned home for several weeks earlier in the season to resolve work permit issues.

He arrived back at Hearts just before the recent international break and last week took a few sessions with the youth squad before stepping up to work with the first-team players.

It has just about been business as usual this week with a double session for the first team squad on Monday and yesterday, although, of course, it has been a testing few days for the players.

Understandably, they were down after losing to Kilmarnock so the news of the departure of Valdas made it a double whammy - if it was possible for them to feel any worse.

The players were very disappointed but the club statement released on Monday stressed Valdas will be back in a couple of weeks so we'll get on with it until he returns.

The professionalism of our squad has never been in question, especially with those who have been here since the days of Craig Levein, and they have coped with losing managers before.

Valdas will only be away for the short term and I'm confident the boys will respond over the next couple of weeks in their usual magnificent manner because they have been over the course before.

What about me? Well, the club has made its decision on the way it wants to go and I'm very happy to assist Malofeev on a short-term basis until Valdas returns in a couple of weeks.

He'll need that assistance because neither he nor Korobochka speaks English and although Koslovski does and is with us on the training ground, he does not have the SPL experience at this stage to get Malofeev's message across.

I'll need to take a more hands-on role in the dugout, starting from this weekend against Dunfermline, because it's vital to get instructions across to players as quickly as possible.

By the time a message is passed from Malofeev to me via Koslovski it may be too late so I hope to use the next few days to attune further to Malofeev's coaching beliefs and philosophies to get a handle on how he wants us to play.

Of course, he has watched many of our games so he knows the players and, hopefully, I can react quickly to the ideas he wants to put in place as well as suggesting a few of my own.

Valdas' absence, albeit for a limited time, has dominated discussions over the last couple of days but we're also keen to bounce back against the Pars after the Killie defeat.

I have great faith we can turn in performances that will keep us on track for the title because there's still a long way to go in the league - 27 games - and an awful lot of twists and turns to come. We accept the team have not done as well as they had by this stage last season but that can be rectified in the weeks and months ahead.

It's vital we face the challenge head on and together and turn results around to get closer to league leaders Celtic.

I understand why the fans were upset after the defeat at the weekend but it's vital no one assumes three points are in the bag for the team before a ball is kicked, especially at Tynecastle.

Opposition sides are now setting themselves up to be harder to break down.

In fact, it's probably easier to win on the road at the moment because at least sides open up in front of their own fans, as Aberdeen and Motherwell showed recently.

These days teams are lining up in a much more stubborn and determined fashion when they face us at Tynecastle and know if they're drawing at halftime it's a great position to be in.

Over the next few weeks I'd ask the fans to continue to get behind the team because we can still enjoy a very successful season.

And we all want to see Valdas back on the training ground as soon as possible to help take us in the direction we all wish to head.

As told to Gary Ralston

Taken from the Daily Record