Former Hearts star Ryan Stevenson has said the club hierarchy have to hold themselves responsible for the team’s disastrous season – and wants them to ditch analytics to find a manager who understands the DNA of the club.
Neil Critchley was sacked as head coach after Saturday’s defeat to Dundee, leaving the Tynecastle side in danger of being dragged into the relegation fight at the bottom of the Premiership.
Critchley had only been in the job for six months, having taken over from Steven Naismith with the team at the foot of the table.
The Englishman was appointed with the use of information provided by Jamestown Analytics, who have also been working to help the club with player recruitment. Hearts are also working on a significant multi-million pound investment from Jamestown owner Tony Bloom.
Despite the cutting-edge data analytics that have been applied, Hearts have suffered this season with a surprise Conference League exit, high-profile defeats and a league campaign that has only brought 11 wins from 34 Premiership games so far.
Stevenson, who was a Tynecastle favourite across two spells at the club, is pained to see the position the team is in, and says the board need to apologise.
“I think it’s a mess,” Stevenson told STV. “I think it’s a big mess at the moment.
“I don’t really know where to go forward for here. I think that they’ve sort of put all their eggs in the one basket with the analytics company and obviously, they’ve brought Neil in.
“I think if we’re being honest, I think outside the sort of bottom six teams, it’s not been good enough. When you look at the two Old Firm teams, Aberdeen and Hibs, they haven’t picked up any wins against them this season which has been extremely disappointing.
“But I think it was very much the easy option to go and sack the manager at the weekend.”
While believing the results have been unacceptable, Stevenson feels some sympathy for Critchley, pointing out that the manager only had one transfer window to bring in players to suit him.
The former attacker believes the Hearts board are those who should take responsibility for what’s happened and they should be publicly putting their hands up and taking the flak that would come their way.
“I think what the board should have done is they should have come out and they should have taken responsibility because it solely lies with them. It solely lies with them.
“I think that probably since the beginning of time with football, these guys sit behind their desks and players and managers lose their contracts and their jobs. Which is fine, I understand that
“But when do these guys who ultimately make the decisions take responsibility?”
Asked what key decisions the Hearts hierarchy has made that have led them to that position, Stevenson believes they should be held accountable for a lot, including a lack of foresight over obvious issues in the playing squad and failing to identify an overreliance on Lawrence Shankland’s goalscoring form last season.
“It’s been pretty much everything this year,” he said. 2Even last year I banged the drum about it. Last year, the fact that we hung our hat on one guy scoring 30-odd goals, which was never going to happen again this season.
“And that’s no disrespect to Lawrence. I think even if Lawrence had went and scored 15 or 20 this season, we would have still been in trouble.
“But I think everyone with a football brain last year could see that at times we scraped through games and it would be Lawrence who maybe got us out of it and got us three points with a 1-0 win or a 2-1 victory.”
The lack of options up front and bullish talk about ambition, including chief executive Andrew McKinlay talking about Jamestown Analytics giving Hearts a chance of a title challenge in the future, perplexed Stevenson when the team was evidently struggling.
“They sat on their hands and they never brought in any strikers,” he said. “They never came out and said why.
“We then listened to them hanging their hats on Tony Bloom’s company and all that sort of stuff that it was going to do eventually. Hearts were going to be challenging for titles when we were sitting bottom of the league.
“I think Andrew came out with that statement at the start of all this, and we now find ourselves in a position where, don’t be kidded, we could end up in a play-off place.”
Stevenson refused to criticise Hearts chair Ann Budge, stressing that she had saved the club from financial ruin and that her contribution at Tynecastle could not be forgotten. But he believes those in executive roles below her have been at fault and may not be the right people to take the club forward.
He also has strong views on the involvement of Jamestown Analytics in picking Critchley’s successor, saying it’s more important the Hearts boardroom puts a focus on someone who understands the club and the support.
He said: “I think the board need to sit in a room and understand what the DNA of that club is, and understand that the next appointment they need to make has to be long-term.
“It has to be somebody that has a plan and understands solely the DNA of Hearts and what these fans want.
“These fans put money in every single year. [The board] need to get it right this time.
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