Forget criticism, Romanov merits credit for letting Paulo Sergio to leave

When Hearts and Paulo Sergio parted company on Thursday night, it was probably inevitable that some people saw it as further evidence of Vladimir Romanov’s caprice. The businessman has got rid of quite a few managers during his time in charge at Tynecastle, some because they were duds. But here was one who had been a hero, leading Hearts to a 5-1 humbling of Hibernian in the Scottish Cup final.

So saying goodbye to Sergio meant that Hearts were dispensing with a successful formula, according to this line of thinking. And, allied to the refusal to offer Ian Black a new contract, and the likely loss of several other leading players, it showed that the Edinburgh club are in crisis, didn’t it?

No. It didn’t. Hearts have undergone substantial cuts over the past couple of years and will continue to downsize. But the way in which Romanov and the club’s directors are acting, far from causing a crisis, is designed to avert one.

Since Romanov took control in 2005, Hearts have wasted millions on moderate players, and have had a bloated first-team squad. So when the Kaunas-based entrepreneur announced late last year that he had grown tired of Scottish football and would be open to offers for the club, there were fears that he would simply pull the plug; that, after six years of overindulgence, he would impose a starvation diet.

Instead, he is getting the club to tighten its belt slowly, steadily, notch by notch. Good players have left, along with some more dispensable ones. More will follow. But there has been no fire sale; no crazed rush to offload anyone with experience and pack the team with under-19s.

Of the team which won the cup final, Black and Stephen Elliott have gone, while Rudi Skacel and Craig Beattie are unlikely to return. Those departures obviously leave holes in midfield and up front, but the bulk of the side is still there.

The club’s claim that young players from the academy are ready to step into Black’s shoes and run the midfield next season does not look too plausible at present. And, given the way the former Caley Thistle player ran the show at Hampden and in many other matches last season, there was a good case for making him a new offer and planning a new side around him.

But there is a bigger case, and a far more compelling one, for making economies. Although they are heading in the right direction financially, Hearts remain heavily in debt. Ubig, the club’s parent company, has to deal with economic reality like every other business. Whether the specific cuts which have been made are the right ones is debatable. But the general need to save money is indisputable.

And that brings us back to Sergio. By the time Hearts got round to offering a renewed contract to the manager, they had finalised their budgets for next season. When he made it clear that there was a chasm between what was on offer and what he was looking for, Hearts chose not to go back to Ubig and ask for a higher budget, no doubt because they knew full well what the answer would be. Once that choice had been made, the only way Sergio would stay was if he got some extra money from funds earmarked for his assistants or for the playing squad. Loyalty to Sergio Cruz and Alberto Cabral meant he would not go down the former route. Common sense meant Hearts would not take the latter option – for what would be the point of having a manager so richly rewarded that no money was left to employ a squad of adults?

Both Hearts and Sergio knew for some time that negotiating a new deal was going to be difficult. He was still being paid by Sporting Lisbon last season, and understandably wanted the same level of income next season. But, with the deal with his former club having ended, that would have meant Hearts paying him double – or perhaps more – than they did last season.

Sergio won himself an indelible place in the club’s history with last month’s comprehensive victory in the biggest Edinburgh derby in the history of the fixture. He was popular with the Hearts support before then, and can now rightly be assured of a rapturous welcome if and when he ever returns to Tynecastle.

But, while his brief reign culminated in glory, it was not otherwise wildly successful. He dealt expertly with some players; not so well with others. He was on top of things at some parts of the season, but at others looked adrift, albeit not through his own fault.

Suso Santana was probably the best example of Sergio’s successful man-management. The Spaniard was out of the picture earlier this year, with Sergio, a keen student of biomechanics, having decided his left side was far too weak compared to his right, leaving him susceptible to injuries. Instead of taking up the club’s offer to end his contract early, Suso took Sergio’s advice, worked hard in the gym, won back his place in the squad, and made a couple of vital contributions in the run-in to the season.

When it came to the squad as a whole, Sergio was unable to coax consistently good performances out of them – hence the team’s fifth-place finish in the SPL. The manager argued that, given the problems with delayed wages and the loss of players in January, that was not too bad. Skacel, for one, argued that for a club of Hearts’ stature it was not nearly good enough.

At one stage back in November it looked like Sergio’s team might even fail to make the top six after a sequence of poor results. When they snapped out of it, according to staff, it was because the players had learned collectively to deal with the adversity caused by unpaid wages, not because of any inspired leadership from Sergio.

The 44-year-old showed himself to be likeable, intelligent and humorous, and his scientific approach brought something different to the Scottish game. Hearts, Sergio himself, and the club’s fans all agree that in an ideal world he would have stayed longer in the post. But given we do not live in an ideal world, the decision to part company is a sound one, and further proof that there is method in Romanov’s supposed madness.