Paul Hartley: Old score won’t settle

TWO weeks shy of the anniversary of their infamous 9-0 humiliation, Aberdeen return to Celtic Park this afternoon. That day it all crumbled when captain Paul Hartley was sent off after 25 minutes. At that stage they were nullifying the Parkhead side; by half-time it was 4-0, by full-time it was more than double that.

Hartley grimaces at the reawakening of those memories. “That was a bad day. A terrible day. It was embarrassing and I hold my hands up and admit I cost the team. No doubt about it. But [the deliberate handball] was a reaction because I didn’t want to see a goal scored and I had to suffer the consequences. But I didn’t see a 9-0 coming.”

A year on and he can now understand the frustrations of his then manager Mark McGhee, who parted company with the club a matter of weeks after that result. Hartley embarked on his own managerial journey in the summer, assuming responsibility for getting the newly-relegated Alloa Athletic back into the Second Division. The realities of life as the boss have already sunk in.

“As a player you train and you play but as a manager you have to think about everything and I now realise what managers are all about and what they feel after a game or in training before it. Managers live for that result because they have put so much in and because their job depends on it. Your job is always on the line.”

Yet, as that day at Celtic Park proved, factors can conspire to undermine. “People always say it but when you become a manager you realise how true it is; once the players cross that white line, there’s virtually nothing you can do. It’s down to the players. I love my job but that’s the frustration.

“We speak about that quite a lot. We put our team up, our formations, our tactics, our set pieces, we work on those things and then ten minutes into a game it can all go pear-shaped.

“Someone makes an individual error, there’s a bit of bad luck, someone just switches off, there is someone just having a stinker, or the defender could slip, someone could get sent off.

“The game is and always has been about the players and you can’t legislate for everything they do or don’t do. You just have to prepare them as well as you can and then hope they can go out and get the result.”

The onus therefore is signing the right kind of players; the right mentality, as well as the best quality possible, a blend of youth and experience.

Looking at the whiteboard in his spartan little office at Recreation Park (“It was worse than this when I came in,” he ventures, “but I got a carpet, the fridge, the wee TV. I just wanted it to be more professional”) there are the usual scribbles and tactical squiggles and a list of players he has at his disposal. Only one of them was inherited.

A man who had played 25 times for Scotland and spent the best years of his career colleting silverware at Hearts and then Celtic, playing in Europe and living the dream, Hartley was suddenly grasping around, trying to find bodies for a new life in the SFL’s lowest tier. Word of mouth, trials, and hard work finally allowed him to piece together a squad which currently sits third in the league, well within touching distance of top spot, and he has settled into the alien environment. Despite 17 years as a pro, the life of a so-called part-time manager has, he admits, felt foreign at times. But he is thriving.

The part-time moniker is a myth, though. When we meet it’s 10am. He has meetings and then a coaching session with the U-17s. It’s a high tempo session, the kind of short, sharp drills he loved as a player. The focus is intense and the demands high but there is constant encouragement. The day will extend into evening when he finally takes the first-team squad. There is attention to detail, from the training exercises to the information on the weekend’s opposition, to the food laid out for the players who have come straight from their “real” jobs. By 10pm Hartley will eventually be able to head home.

While peers are walking straight into the top-flight jobs, Hartley has no qualms about starting on the lower rung of the ladder. “I did the same thing as a player. I started at Hamilton and worked my way up. I learned all the way and now I’m back at the beginning again and hoping I can go all the way back to the top as a manager.”

Part hairdryer, part Mr Calm and Mr Encouragement, he admits it has already been an education and he has already had to adapt.

“I love the training on a Tuesday and Thursday and I love the games on a Saturday but when 4.45pm comes, if we have got a good result then it’s a great feeling but if we’ve not then I think about it all weekend and I don’t even really want to speak to people.

“Over the weekend I think about where I could have done things differently, how we could have done it better.

“I remember when we got beat 5-0 at Elgin and had two men sent off, it was a long journey down the road. It was horrible because I was sitting down the front of the bus and I could hear the guys up the back talking and laughing and because I was used to high standards as a player, those journeys would be very quiet. But I have to remember that this isn’t their full-time job. It’s not their whole life. Yes, they are employees of the club but I have to have the players on board, like any other manager at any other club, and I have had to learn to give a bit. But it hurts me so much when I don’t get a good performance or a win.”

There is nothing wrong with standards but Hartley says there is no point in living in the past. He has fond memories to treasure and almost two decades of frontline experience to build from but while he often experiences odd wee moments of déjà vu as a scene is played out and he remembers being on the other side of it, he is keen to be his own man.

He talks highly of Gordon Strachan, Craig Levein and Craig Brown and their managerial influences but he isn’t one for picking up the phone, plaguing them with questions or begging for advice. “I don’t tend to have a lot of footballing friends. I know a lot of people and got on with them as team-mates but when you were seeing them every day in training I wasn’t one who would want to then see them away from the club too often as well. I still stay in touch with one or two but I have my close friends away from football so it’s just me and my assistant [Paddy Connolly] bouncing ideas off each other.

“Of course I still look out for my old teams and check their results. If we win I do it on the Saturday night or Sunday morning, if not, it might be the Monday before I can face it!”

Aware, therefore, of what is happening in the SPL, he laughs off the idea that the title has already been decided so early in the campaign, despite Rangers’ healthy ten-point lead over Celtic and the Parkhead side’s ongoing balancing act between domestic play and Europa League fixtures.

“I was there as a player and we were eight points clear in January and Rangers pulled it back and won it, and the year before that, we did the same and won it on the last day – so it’s not going Celtic’s way just now and Rangers have started the strongest but there’s still three Old Firm matches and loads of other games still to play and I think more and more teams are showing they are capable of taking points off the Old Firm,” he says.

“That’s the thing – St Mirren going to Ibrox and taking a point, no one really saw that coming, no one thought Kilmarnock would be 3-0 up on Celtic at half-time.”

Both sides play this afternoon. Celtic have to find top gear again after Thursday night’s European excursion, which Hartley says is “tough, very tough”, especially as he believes Aberdeen have tightened up. Meanwhile, Rangers have to overcome a Hearts side who have already defeated Celtic on their own turf.

“When either Celtic or Rangers go to Tynecastle, they know it’s probably their hardest away game outside the Old Firm matches. That’s always been the case and when I played at Hearts we were always strong against the Old Firm at Tynecastle. We believed we could win and more and more teams are beginning to think that way and give good performances as well.”

But his focus is now Alloa. Applying his usual high standards, he says he will consider anything shy of promotion a failure. Looking back, all he can see is inspiration for the future. He worked his way up to some magnificent highs on the pitch and now, as he learns about life in the technical area where he is a pacing, demonstrative bag of nerves, he would love his new career to enjoy the same upward trajectory.