The Scottish Premiership, while not routinely feted for the quality of the fare on show on the pitch, is nevertheless known for many things.
A certain brand of madness that marks it out against the increasing blandness on offer down south. The highest attended league in Europe per capita. And it may just be about to add another accolade to the list – the only league that is impervious to the wizardry of Jamestown Analytics.
Or, more accurately, the only league where it might not be given a fair crack of the whip.
When considering the question of who should be the next manager of Hearts, the name of Derek McInnes is one you may expect to hear from a fan, a pundit or a journalist. That’s because, given his track record at Aberdeen before it all petered out and in spells at Kilmarnock, he is the bleedingly obvious candidate (save arguably, from John McGlynn) from the Scottish scene.
Which raises questions. And, in my mind at least, doubts about the wisdom of going down the road of recruiting ‘a safe pair of hands’.
Read more:
- Derek McInnes to Hearts on hold with Ann Budge on holiday
- Hearts reach agreement with Kilmarnock for Derek McInnes
- Kilmarnock boss McInnes responds to Hearts job links
Now, as the briefings seemingly seeping out of Tynecastle would have you believe, the Jamestown model actually had stated the obvious back in October and marked McInnes out as the ideal man to lead the Gorgie revolution, but the club didn’t want to pay the compensation at that time. Good move.
Anyway, however they came to land on the name of the current Kilmarnock manager, his impending appointment does seem at odds with the club’s apparent direction of travel.
I don’t want to be unfair to McInnes, who despite his teams routinely attracting that slightly back-handed compliment of being ‘well-organised and well-drilled’, is no dinosaur. And like any modern coach, he will be used to working alongside data analysts to inform his views.
But to shape them? I worry that this may be the case of the right sort of man for a club of Hearts’ stature at precisely the wrong time.
With Tony Bloom pumping £10m into the club and his statistical models about to bring far greater influence to bear, I wonder how much of an uneasy marriage it may be between the brave new world of data-led recruitment and the older school approach of total managerial control that McInnes has enjoyed throughout his coaching career.
Jamestown Analytics has worked elsewhere – at Brighton, at Union Saint Gilloise, at Como – because these clubs have given themselves over to it and rigidly followed its recommendations.
Here, the culture (and possibly also because in the context of the leagues they compete in, Hearts has the greatest level of expectation of any of those clubs) means there isn’t much prospect of fans accepting who might actually be the most suitable candidate to work with the new model. Not if he doesn’t also have the big-club experience or the gravitas to go with it.
Had Fabian Hurzeler, the 32-year-old Brighton manager now succeeding in the English Premier League, rocked up at Tynecastle last summer instead of on England’s south coast, what would the reaction have been? Sceptical, at best?
The spectre of Ian Cathro still hangs over Hearts, and Scottish football as a whole. Look what happened, the cynics will say, when a ‘laptop’ manager was given a chance. Ironically, Cathro may well have been a victim of timing too, and might have fared better if he was a candidate to lead this new era.
Someone like Stevie Grieve, for example, a young Scottish coach who has been doing a fantastic job over in Finland in his first managerial role with SJK.
His outfit are currently sitting in second place in the Veikkausliiga, and he has been involved in coaching for over 20 years, but his lack of a notable professional playing career and the fact he has never managed in his homeland before meant that the Hearts board were never likely to consider him this time around. Neither myself, nor I’m sure, Stevie, are naïve enough to think otherwise.
Instead, they seem to have done what many boards do when a certain ‘profile’ of manager fails, and lurched in the completely opposite direction. Which is fine, but in my view, there should be more importance placed on the way that their new prospective manager may take the club in the future, rather than what they may have achieved elsewhere in the past. Particularly when the environment and the expectations of how they are going to work will be completely different.
At Aberdeen, McInnes was given the keys to the kingdom under Stuart Milne, and it has been a similar story at Kilmarnock, where Billy Bowie has entrusted the running of the entire football department to his manager.
Hurzeler has had success at Brighton because he has used the data to inform him, and shown a certain flexibility to bend to its will, while also maintaining at least some autonomy over things like in-game tactics.
If it was a similar scenario at Hearts, it may well work out fine. But will McInnes be able, or amenable, to ceding any control over things like transfers, or the style in which his team should play when it’s his reputation and neck on the line? It remains to be seen. And I have my doubts.
Which could make the hiring of a ‘safe pair of hands’, at this particular time, a risk for Hearts.
