Tall order for Hearts to get back to winning

The Edinburgh club drew a veil of silence of their own dissident yesterday. No one from the coaching staff turned up at the Riccarton training complex for the weekly press conference and therefore there is no way if confirming whether Pressley will play, or not, against Rangers at Tynecastle tomorrow.

The Hearts captain is supposed to be ready to play but neither Eduard Malofeev, the caretaker coach in the absence of Valdas Ivanauskas, or the Russian’s translator, Alex Koslovski, the sporting director, showed up to answer questions. Nor did Eugenijus Raibovas, who will replace Malofeev after tomorrow’s vital game.

Romanov is currently in the middle of a self-imposed silence — at least, to the press but not his players — as part of a point-scoring exercise in which he claims to be unable to receive a fair deal from the media. The policy of silence has spread among the coaching staff over the last week.

If a siege mentality was worth an extra goal out on the pitch, Hearts fans will be smiling tomorrow night. However, it does not always work like that. At least Ibrahim Tall was able to offer one viewpoint from the trouble Tynecastle. The defender played alongside Pressley in the Hearts defence against Hibernian ten days ago in the CIS Insurance Cup defeat and wants to see him back in the side.

Tall was careful to sidestep any questions that either addressed the issue of Romanov’s running of the club — which has sparked plans for a stay-behind protest from Hearts fans after the Rangers game — or whether Pressley has been stripped of the captaincy. However, the French-raised Senegalese knows that Hearts have a much better chance of trying to achieve success with Pressley in the side than out of it.

“In all my time at Hearts, Steven has been the captain and, for me, he’s a good captain — that’s my opinion,” Tall said when asked about the possibility of Pressley coming back, but without his armband if he is now truly stripped of the status he has held for six years at Tynecastle. The Scotland defender’s act of rebellion three weeks ago, in exposing the unrest within the dressing-room about Romanov’s running of the club (aided by Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon) may not offer a way back, even with demotion.

Tall sought to paint a picture of unity in the Hearts squad that would be in stark contrast to the allegations of a plot from Lithuanian players to strip him of his captaincy. “The dressing-room does not have a problem, all the players are together,” the former Sochaux defender insisted. “We are all just thinking about the Rangers game just now. Steven Pressley has shown good leadership in the past. It is difficult for me to comment because I don’t know what happened. All I know is that Steven is good player, an international, and we need all of our best players to help us to win games.”

It is a measure of Hearts’ plethora of choices that they have so many international players just now. Roman Bednar, Takis Fyssas, Mauricio Pinilla and Nerjust Barasa were all away on duty for their countries but the Czech, the Greek and the Chilean will not be in Malofeev’s starting line-up, only Barasa, the Lithuanian.

Will the Hearts head coach again deprive himself of Pressley and Hartley as he did last Monday at Falkirk? That would be a costly gamble from a man who has yet to win a game as he takes his fifth, and probably last, fixture.

“This is a big game for us,” Tall acknowledged. “All the players want to think about is how important it is. We have not won for seven games now and, hopefully, we can win this one.

“I hope Steven plays. I have spoken to him this week and he is the same as normal. I don’t know when we will find out the team. Not until Sunday morning, I suppose. The manager controls those things, it is his decision. As players, we just think of what happens on the pitch. We know that if we have a good game, we can win. We need a good performance for the supporters.”

Tall comes from a country where the Machiavellian goings-on at Marseilles and Paris Saint-Germain, who have frequently sacked coaches, rival Hearts for a lack of stability. However, that X-factor at Tynecastle — the unpredictable Romanov — means that the defender is struggling with the sharp contrast to his previous club, at sleepy Sochaux.

“There, I had the same manager for three years,” Tall said. “Here, we have changed managers a lot. But for the players it is no problem. Now we have an experienced manager to look after us [during Ivanauskas’s absence].”

Tall knows he will hear some familiar accents out on the pitch tomorrow. Paul Le Guen was someone that Tall encountered several times during his time at Sochaux, though the defender has little memory of Jéremy Clément or Lionel Letizi, Rangers’ French duo.

“In my three years in Le Championat, Le Guen won the title each time with Lyons,” Tall recalls. “He was also good in the Champions League with Lyons. I know he has had problems here but he needs time. He is a good manager. However, I know from my own experience that it is hard to settle into Scottish football. The tactics and technical side of the game are different and you have to fight for the ball more here. It can take you six months or a year to get used to Scottish football.” Le Guen, though, may not have a year.

Who knows how long Pressley has left at Hearts? Or whether Romanov will still be at Tynecastle in a year’s time. Reports yesterday claiming that the Lithuanian owner has been approached by an Edinburgh consortium to buy out his majority shareholding were not commented on by Romanov. However, the millionaire, according to a close source, is not prepared to walk away from his project and has no intention of selling.

It may sound like a tall order after all the turmoil that has surrounded Hearts, but they have to get back to winning ways.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk