Daniel Stendel is sick of excuses at Hearts

Fed up with the excuses and what he considers an overly positive atmosphere around the club, Hearts manager Daniel Stendel wants his players to face up to the severity of their Premiership situation and display professionalism not fear.
Hearts head coach Daniel Stendel has told his players to banish their fear. Picture: Ross Parker / SNSHearts head coach Daniel Stendel has told his players to banish their fear. Picture: Ross Parker / SNS
Hearts head coach Daniel Stendel has told his players to banish their fear. Picture: Ross Parker / SNS

In a tetchy mood as he faced the media yesterday, the Gorgie boss was feeling defensive as he addressed the rumours of dressing-room unrest, which emerged this week before being shot down 
publicly by the club captain Steven Naismith.

The claims suggested that players are finding communication hard as they struggle to adapt to the style of play favoured by the man who inherited a squad deep in the relegation mire and who has, thus far, proved unable to improve their league status.

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His return of one win in 11 league matches leaves the Tynecastle club still marooned at the foot of the table, with a crucial head-to-head against relegation rivals St Mirren tomorrow night, the latest “must win” fixture.

But Stendel, who insists that management and the squad are united, has little sympathy for players who are feeling the heat.

Admitting that he is feeling the pressure and that he expected more from himself, he said: “We are not happy about the results and the results decide whether you are good or not.

“We can help every player, we can train well, have a good plan, but when we don’t win on a Saturday, the opinion is it was s**t. This is the job.”

Stendel has been without January signing Toby Sibbick, who looked a key piece of the jigsaw when he did feature but has been ill and unfit to train or play, and while it is hoped he may take some part in Paisley, international striker Liam Boyce is the latest to battle the bug and is a doubt.

But Stendel warns they can no longer wait for the perfect set of circumstances for things to come together. They need to dig deep.

“There were a lot of excuses in the last weeks about pressure, or that the players aren’t confident, but this is professional football,” he said. “You need to handle it. We have when we are in training, and before the game, but in the game players need to know that this is their job. We try to find the best players to handle it but we need quality and mentality and we talked with the players about this and we need players who understand that it is a big privilege to play for this club.

“Who doesn’t understand that it is not normal that 16,000-17,000 still come to every game in Tynecastle with the results we have been getting this season? In Germany, with these results, we would get 5,000 or even 2,000 in the stadium if we gave these performances. But here we get the support every week, also in away games, so they are playing for a big club in Scotland and they are all on good contracts here so everybody can expect them to do all that they can to stay up in this league and win games.

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“This is what I expect and this is what all the supporters expect from professional 
footballers.”

Annoyed that it has taken so long for the reality of their plight to sink in, and frustrated by the view of some around the club that they remain too good to plummet through the trapdoor, Stendel concedes that if they get their act together and battle, they do have a squad capable of preserving their Premiership status.

“When you are not winning games and not all players can play, not all are happy,” he added. “The biggest thing for every player, whether I play them or not, is to bring their best performance in training; bring the best mentality to help this team stay up. This is what I expect from professional players. It doesn’t matter if our situation is not easy.

“We have to win, so what we do is every day we give the players new information to improve their behaviour and I think the biggest thing is we stay together. It doesn’t matter what is coming from outside.

“We have more quality than a lot of other teams in this league but everybody needs to show it in the games. The time for us to say ‘next week, next week, next week’ is over. We have played Ross County, Hamilton and Kilmarnock and we did not win one game. If you expect next week it is all better, it will not happen.”