If they ever start handing out trophies for self harming in Scottish football someone at Tynecastle had better order in a bigger cabinet.
Because even though Hearts are far from being the only club capable of turning a drama into a crisis, they do seem to specialise in the subject to such an extent that they can be considered best in class. And by some distance.
Yes, St Johnstone proved just yesterday afternoon that they too have a knee-jerk reaction in their locker which they are not afraid to use. By sacking Callum Davidson with just six games to go, the Perth outfit have managed to paint a picture of blind panic at a time when their position in the top flight seemed reasonably safe for next season. All of which would seem like an extraordinarily stupid thing to do had it not come about on the back of the latest eye-popping, kamikaze-style stunts in the Capital, where Hearts and Ann Budge have somehow managed to surpass themselves over the last week or so.
The decision to sack serial Hibs slayer Robbie Neilson, just days before an Edinburgh derby, was difficult enough to comprehend - and that was even before Steven Naismith oversaw the club’s first defeat in this fixture for three years at lunchtime on Saturday. Naismith hasn’t helped himself either in terms of his own credibility by insisting that securing a third placed finish is not really the be-all-and-end-all when Neilson was bulleted with that one issue in mind.
And then there’s the curious business of Robert Snodgrass who was effectively oxtered off the premises by Naismith on the caretaker’s first day in the job, despite being the most talented and influential player on the books. But all this might be nothing more than the tip of the iceberg where Hearts’ self-inflicted meltdown is concerned which is why the revelations still to come to the surface promise to prove so utterly fascinating.
Put it this way, if clumsy, hamfisted soap operas are your thing, then this one might be worth keeping an eye on between now and the end of the season for the sake of sheer entertainment value alone.
There’s a sub-plot beginning to emerge which wreaks of back-stabbing and betrayal on the training grounds of Riccarton over the last couple of months, as Neilson was running into a brick wall in terms of performances on the pitch. Or the lack thereof.
On the face of things, Neilson was axed after a miserable run of five straight defeats and even though he could argue - with some justification - that he merited stronger backing from above, football management is a notoriously fickle business, driven by results. Neilson can also point to the fact that two of those five defeats came in back-to-back beatings inflicted upon him by a rampant Celic side which no-one else in the country is capable of stopping.
But, even though the decision to remove him from his position seemed a little too hair-trigger in nature. Neilson has been around the game long enough to know that job security no longer exists, especially when the herd begins to move.
So, when a significant section of the Hearts fans turned against him - even defacing their own plaza with graffiti calling for his head - Neilson probably suspected that time was running out. And yet, he may also have genuine cause to believe that he was deliberately undermined from the inside too and this is where the next few weeks could become a genuine reach-for- the-popcorn kind of saga.
Self harm? Budge will have her legal team placed on a state of high alert while attempts are being made to negotiate a severance package with Snodgrass, who has been brutally kicked to the curb despite making a huge impact at the club since signing for Neilson last September.
If Snodgrass believes that he has been stabbed in the back by senior figures around the club’s training HQ, then he’s unlikely to go quietly. Which is precisely why Budge will be pushing hard for a non-disclosure agreement to be signed off as part of any pay-off.
What’s more, if Budge herself is complicit in the decision to rip up the 35-year-old’s contract, then Snodgrass is likely to feel even less inclined to accept a gagging order for the sake of a few month’s pay. It’s not as if the former Leeds, Norwich and West Ham man needs the money after all.
And if Budge has been the orchestrator of his downfall, then it also begs an obvious question. Who exactly has been in her ear all of this time? It certainly can’t have been Neilson nor his right hand Lee McCulloch as the ousted management team were relying so heavily upon Snodgrass to turn their season around.
If they were more than happy to have Snodgrass driving standards from the inside, then it stands to reason that there must have been others around the place who held a very different opinion of him. And these individuals, whoever they may be, must carry some fairly serious clout around the club in order to have earned their own personal hotline to the chairwoman.
Given that Snodgrass was so highly respected and well liked by his own team-mates, this interference is unlikely to have gone unnoticed. All in all, it really is an extraordinary mess, even by Hearts’ own high standards, and the abject nature of Saturday’s surrender at Easter Road has done nothing to suggest that this latest night of the long knives has returned a sense of unity to the club.
Another defeat next weekend at home to Ross County could see Hearts go into the split clinging onto fifth place by their fingertips. Perhaps it’s just as well then that a third place finish is not the be-all-and-end-all that Neilson considered it to be.
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