There is always someone willing to pee on your strawberries. As Eva Olid has just found out.
It would seem that taking Hearts from relegation fodder to title winners across a five-year spell was not all that special, according to former Scotland internationalist Rachel Corsie.
A pundit on Sky Sports WSL show last weekend, Corsie was asked about Olid’s move to Manchester United this summer. “Over-stated” was one of the words Corsie used when it came to analysing Olid’s role at Hearts, with that dismissal in keeping with the general tone after she was invited to assess the Spaniard, her title- winning season and her move to Old Trafford.
“In some ways it has been over-inflated…it is a massive jump for her,” said Corsie last weekend in reference to the title win and the move south.
“She did win the league with Hearts…and I am sort of conflicted in this. She did win the league but she won the league in a season in Scotland that felt like no one wanted to.
“It was 20 points shy of what typically has been required in the last three, four seasons to win the league and if you look at the performances of Celtic, Rangers and Glasgow City, they fell short.
“She took advantage of that, no doubt. It has been glossed over and over-stated what a good job she did with younger players coming through. I think she did a good job but there is a narrative that she developed younger players. No players from that squad have progressed to go into the national team.”
When Olid was announced as Hearts manager in 2021, the Tynecastle side had avoided relegation only because of league reconstruction.
The expansion of the league prevented them from slipping out of the top flight. Offered a five-year project at the club, Olid’s reign culminated in a title win this summer, the first time the club have got their hands on the championship.
The building blocks had been put in place in the preceding years; there were the back-to-back fourth-placed finishes and the Scottish Cup final for the first time in their history. There was a first victory over a top-three side, against Rangers in April 2024, a defeat the then Rangers manager, Jo Potter, said cost them the league title.
That Hearts limped over the line this summer is fair comment. They lost their final game of the season to Hibs and drew their penultimate game against Glasgow City at the Oriam as they flirted with imploding. But there is a churlishness to the comments about Olid from Corsie.
Regardless of who would have won the title last season, they would have done so without hitting the same points tally that has marked previous campaigns. This would suggest a fairly obvious regression in standards across the league as a whole rather than any individual failings.
Rangers crumpled on the last day of the campaign at Petershill when the title was staring them in the face. A win of any kind would have sent the title to Ibrox. They lost the game 6-0. Glasgow City toiled in the split with a huge Nicole Kozlova- shaped hole in their team. Celtic were miles off it after another inconsistent campaign. None of that was Olid’s concern.
That there is a huge jump in going from Hearts to Manchester United is clear. But Olid’s credentials for a team whose transfer spending has been labelled “unsustainable” and with a wage bill which is half of that of title rivals Arsenal and a third of Chelsea’s, are clear.
Corsie has headed back to her roots at Aberdeen this season with a role on the Pittodrie board and a job description that encompasses overseeing the women and girls’ football operation at the club.
Aside from the awkward optics of someone in that position passing comment on the standard within the SWPL and a title-winning manager whose reward was to bag a huge role in the WSL, there is also the small matter of what is happening at Aberdeen.
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The team kept their place in the top flight by the skin of their teeth last summer after enduring a play-off. Corsie bristled at the suggestion that the women’s team are there as an exercise in box-ticking when she was announced a few months ago, insisting that there was an authentic interest in developing the team on and off the park.
She even cited chairman Dave Cormack pitching up beside her to take in a game.
Four games into the SWPL season and Aberdeen have yet to pick up a point, have shipped 14 goals and are only saved the ignominy of propping up the table by a Montrose side who have conceded one goal more.
Olid may be able to offer some advice about what it takes to turn that around.
AND ANOTHER THING
Caroline Weir being shortlisted for the Ballon d’Or for the second successive season is an exceptional achievement.
The midfielder is not out of place when it comes to rubbing shoulders with the other players on the who’s who list of football’s best.
She deserves the chance to go and showcase those talents on the biggest stage of all next summer at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
AND FINALLY
There won’t be too many tears shed at the fact Joey Barton is languishing in custody as he waits for his latest case to go to trial.
Up on a GBH charge, Barton’s reputation goes before him as he finds himself back in custody. Ample time at least for some self-reflection.
