Robbie Neilson pulled up a chair before flashing a grin that says he’s seen it all before. And of course the Hearts boss has.
The flak that’s been aimed at the Tynecastle gaffer in the wake of last week’s defeat to Kilmarnock, his side’s fifth in their last six games, is nothing new to the 42-year-old. From air-borne banners to this week’s graffiti on the ground scrawled outside the club’s new main stand, a small but angry element of the Gorgie support continue to take every opportunity to aim a pop at their manager.
But just as Neilson refused to get carried away with the praise when his side were rampaging clear in third place, neither will he allow his spirit levels to sink now that their advantage over Aberdeen has been slashed back to a single point. The Jambos chief understands perfectly well the fans’ frustrations with their recent slip - but given his team still remain in the box seat for third place and a return to European action you won’t catch him reaching for the panic button just yet.
Sitting down for yesterday’s press conference, he responded with a laugh when it was suggested this past week might have been among the toughest he’s faced in his two spells in charge of Hearts. “Not yet, no,” he smiled. “We are sitting in third place and everyone is like, ‘God Almighty, it’s the end of the world’.
“When I look at the league, we’re third. We’ve had a difficult four games and we played Celtic back-to-back, which is always tough. Then we went to Pittodrie and didn’t get the result.
“Last week (against Kilmarnock) was a real disappointment because we took the lead. We have an opportunity on Saturday (against St Mirren)’. If you get three points, it takes you into the derby (with Hibs).
“Win that, and then win the next home game, and then you forget about what has gone on over the last three or four weeks - as everyone has forgotten about what was going on three or four weeks prior to this wee spell. For us, it’s just about remaining calm.
“Yes, we’ve had a wee issue, but I know if you asked any other club outside Rangers and Celtic whose position would they want? They’d want ours.
“[The pressure] is part and parcel, that’s what we want. We want to try to get European football consistently and be up at the top end of the league.
“The key in football is resilience for players, managers and coaches. You need to be able to take the hits because when you lose a few games it’s the end of the world.
“When you win a few, it’s the best team since the 60s. It’s about that happy medium in between, keeping everyone on a level playing field. People look at it game-by-game and, yes, the job is to do that, but also to look at the bigger picture of where we are.
“Ultimately, we’re sitting where we want to be. Yes, we’d have liked a bigger gap but coming back from the World Cup break we were five behind.
“This period has been difficult. It’s up to us to get through it. You do that by remaining positive and doing the right things that have got us here.”
Former Hearts boss Craig Levein this week admitted he still struggles to understand why there remained such reluctance to accept a man who registered 200-plus appearances and was a Scottish Cup-winner as a player and who has now led the side out of the Championship and into Europe twice as boss.
You suspect Neilson has no idea either but he’s not going to lose sleep over it. Casting his mind back to the infamous plane protest in March 2016, he said: “They went to an extreme on that one. Look, what can you do?
“All I can do is prepare the players for Saturday and try to win the game. If we win, great. If we don’t, then we’ll prepare for the next game.
“For some of the players, it’s a bit different here. They need to recognise that, if you want to be at a big club, you need to perform every week. If you don’t get that performance, you have to take it on the chin.”
But Neilson insists he won’t be looking out his critics if Hearts do manage to hold off the Dons and finish third for the second year running. Instead, he’ll take his satisfaction from elsewhere. “It’ll be more because we have had European football to deal with, we’ve had injuries,” he explained.
“And probably the most difficult thing this season is we’ve had no real consistency of selection or personnel because we have had that many. We’re going into this St Mirren game not knowing if we’re going to have to change our goalie.
“We still have a number of key players who are long-termers who probably won’t make it this season. So that’s made it more difficult but it’s a season we can still finish very strongly and be happy with.
“You need to win on a Saturday. Nobody cares about what’s going on in the background and who’s doing this or that. You need to win. That’s my job - to win on a Saturday. And if you don’t do that then you have to accept there will be criticism.”
Neilson is confident his team will bounce back this weekend but acknowledges a St Mirren side themselves eying up a shot at Euro qualification are not ideal opponents. “They’ll be fired up as they always are coming to Tynecastle,” he said.
“Stephen Robinson has them very strong, very organised, physical, great on set-plays. We know we need to deal with that physical side first and foremost but we’re at Tynecastle, we need to pass the ball and try and dominate the game as we have most of the time this season.”
READ NEXT
