Who'd be a manager: Are Hibs and Hearts fans the moaniest, grumpiest, most demanding in Scotland? - Aidan Smith

Some of the pressure ‘gaffers’ come under is well wide of the mark – especially when teams are winning

He’s got a droll sense of humour, has Ian McCall. The last time we talked, in a Glasgow West End coffee shop, nearby streets were shut off while a film crew shot a crime thriller. An aficionado of the genre – not words I often manage to get onto this page – he had to confess to not knowing the true story of serial killer John Christie and 10 Rillington Place. “The guy lured women back to his flat and killed them,” explained our barista. “Buried the corpses under the floorboards.” “Oh I see,” said McCall. “So not a romcom, then?”

McCall was the Saturday afternoon guest on Sportsound last week and he was making the show regulars chuckle, though this was slightly nervous laughter. He was being perfectly serious when he said that debate about Scottish football had become feverish – not just on BBC Scotland but across the media – and that too much of the excitable chatter concerned managers at risk of being sacked.

And he’s got a point, hasn’t he? Hype of our game that’s in inverse proportion to the quality on the pitch. Demands regarding performances and results that are in inverse proportion to the average time allowed to spend in post. And the number of occasions mics are set to record that’s in inverse proportion to the prospect of anything new or meaningful being said.

Steven Naismith and Nick Montgomery have felt the wrath of Hearts and Hibs fans this season.

Every time there’s an r in the month, every time there’s an a in the day, managers could be quoted, if only they’d allow themselves to be. But then they have to front up. Pre-match and especially right afterwards. TV, radio, written press, in-house channel. A difficult day, how did you see it? What’s the mood in the dressing-room? How much pressure are you under? Do you still believe you can turn things around? Have you spoken to the chairman?

And then the issue is chewed over and thrown around. By pundits who’ve never managed, who’d be too scared to manage, who’ve managed and were sacked. All of this is explained away, just like on Sportsound last Saturday, as a love of the “drama” of Scottish football.

Then social media has a go. Partisan, invested, never bland, from the heart, aimed at the jugular – and often mental and sometimes vicious and downright horrible. Managers say they’re not on it. Never read it. But it spills back into the debate, at its worst as if from a burst waste pipe. Who’d be a manager? And who’d be a manager in Edinburgh? Are fans of Hibs and Hearts the moaniest, grumpiest, most demanding, most entitled, most deluded? Sometimes I wonder.

Like right now. On Tuesday night, after progressing to the next round of the Scottish Cup, a competition where they’ve been finalists three times in the previous five seasons, Hearts resumed in the Premiership where they have a strong grip of third place as the best of the rest. The first half did not go as planned and Dundee led 2-0. There were boos at half-time and Steven Naismith was moved to describe the atmosphere at Tynecastle as “toxic”.

Ian McCall raised some strong points recently on Sportsound.

Now, toxic is usually reserved for when teams can’t win a game, rather than a side who at the moment refuse to lose one, triumphing at Celtic Park and Easter Road along the way. What’s your problem, Jambos? In the second half Hearts duly turned the match around and won again.

Over at Easter Road Hibs fans would kill for Hearts’ current form for the following night their team lost to Rangers in Nick Montgomery’s 19th league game in charge. At first, way, way back in the autumn, the support were encouraged by cavalier football and the complete absence in Montgomery’s remarks of predecessor Lee Johnson’s pretentiousness. Now they’re less sure. They don’t like the results, obviously, and are growing tired of the manager’s post-match wrap-ups tending to all sound the same.

Bring back Jack Ross! Were we wrong about Paul Heckingbottom? Shaun Maloney wasn’t all bad. At least David Brent – Johnson’s chief source of ideological inspiration, apparently – gave us a laugh. You can find this stuff slooshing around on the great, democratising internut where everyone can have a view about the least stable club in Scottish football, however unstable they themselves might be.

No one has any patience now. They all want the new thing, next-day delivery. You, dear reader, may not have had the patience to read down this far, having been mildly intrigued by the headline. Loony Tories shout: “Rishi Sunak out!” Loony Hibbies shout: “Change! Now! Er … [checks if It’s a Knockout joker is still valid] … again!”

There are more problems at Hibs than just Montgomery can solve after what was yesterday the 20th go at it. And what is he or any manager supposed to say when asked for the umpteenth time about a match or a player or a controversial incident or a result or Margot Robbie being snubbed by the Oscars? These people are not poets or philosophers. And football, as we’re often told, is a simple game.

Younger fans may not be aware but we used to rarely hear from managers. For preview, Eddie Turnbull at Hibs might offer a few terse sentences to Edinburgh’s Evening News. The absence of any other comment would have us scrabbling for his column in the match programme as if it contained the secret of life’s inner meaning (though it was penned by the News’s journo). Sportscene later? Hardly ever.

And did we feel deprived? Disrespected? Not a bit. The game was the thing, not the “drama”.