Robertson set to be demoted at Hearts

Published on Monday 9 May 2005 01:29

JOHN Robertson will today be invited to stay on at Hearts - but in a diminished capacity as an assistant to an as-yet-unidentified head of football. The current head coach will be told the reasoning behind the board’s decision by Phil Anderton, the Hearts chief executive.

Anderton and George Foulkes, the club chairman, wanted Robertson to be given more time to prove himself in the job, which he only took last November after Craig Levein left for Leicester City. At a six-hour board meeting on Friday night, however, they were unable to carry their proposal.

No vote was taken, and a consensus was eventually reached, but it was not the one Foulkes had hoped for when he decided to bring forward a review of Robertson’s role at the club.

Foulkes came up against sustained scepticism about Robertson’s ability to take the club forward. The three board members appointed by the club’s principal shareholder Vladimir Romanov have been tasked with transforming Hearts into genuine challengers to the Old Firm, and they have not seen enough evidence of Robertson’s suitability for the task. The consensus or compromise, then, was that Robertson and his assistant coach, Donald Park, should remain employees of the club, but that someone with greater and more widespread experience should be brought in as head of the football division. Anatoly Byshovets, who was mooted as a director of football around the time of the Romanov takeover, remains an adviser to the Lithuanian but is not being considered for the top job at Hearts.

Even if Robertson decides to stay on, the board’s failure to confirm him in his job will be opposed by the majority of fans.

The advent of Romanov enabled Hearts to cancel the sale of Tynecastle which had been agreed by Chris Robinson, but the continued presence on the board of the previous chief executive has caused considerable disquiet about the Lithuanian’s intentions.

Robinson, who is still expected to step down as a director in the close season, is understood to have argued against the Anderton-Foulkes proposal at the meeting.