HEARTS yesterday asked Motherwell for permission to speak to Mark McGhee about the vacant managerial post at Tynecastle. Within hours, Motherwell turned down that request, but their refusal is expected to be no more than a bargaining tactic, designed to get maximum compensation for the loss of a key employee who has a year to run on his current contract.
Barring any last-minute hitches, McGhee will be announced as Hearts' new manager early next week. He will take Scott Leitch with him from Fir Park as his No2, and he will receive an annual salary of around £350,000.
That sum, several times greate
r than his wage at Motherwell, is one very good reason why McGhee would be tempted to move to Hearts. Money apart, however, the move is fraught with risk: if it goes badly wrong, as so many things have done at Hearts over the past three years, it could do serious damage to his resurgent career.
After a two-year break in that career towards the end of the 1990s when he was fired by Wolves, McGhee, who celebrates his 51st birthday tomorrow, has steadily re-established his reputation. He won promotion in his first season at Millwall and reached the play-offs the following year; he then emulated the first part of that achievement at Brighton, where he moved after falling out with Millwall chairman Theo Paphitis; and he has just taken Motherwell to third place in the SPL, bringing them European football for the first time in 13 years.
He is now about to forsake the chance of entering the UEFA Cup with a stable, well-motivated squad of players to join a club in disarray. Hearts lost their last three league games to finish eighth, with many of their players appearing utterly demotivated. The squad lacks cohesion, and there will not be massive funds available to reshape it, as the club pours millions into a planned new stand.
Then there is Vladimir Romanov. The Lithuanian businessman, who took over ownership of Hearts in 2005, has consistently interfered in team selection, and tinkered with the coaching set-up at the club.
In those three years since Romanov took over, George Burley, Graham Rix, Valdas Ivanauskas, Eduard Malofeev, Anatoly Korobochka and Stephen Frail have all been managers, either "full-time" or as caretakers. Burley did brilliantly in his brief time in charge, but little has gone right since then.
So why does McGhee think he can succeed where those others have failed? For one, like many in football, he has considerable self-belief. His track record cannot match that of Burley, who is now in charge of the national team, but otherwise he can look at that list of names and honestly tell himself he can fare better.
Second, senior figures at Hearts have worked hard to ensure that Romanov will understand his own meddling has been counterproductive. There was evidence of that in the club's January statement that they were looking for a manager who would have "full responsibility for team selection" – a statement that was issued with the owner's agreement.
Yet, no matter how carefully McGhee's contract is worded, there is always a danger that Romanov will seek to intervene in one way or the other. He did so even when Burley was winning every game; he will surely be all the more tempted to do so if McGhee goes through a sticky patch.
It is improbable, then, that a man as worldy-wise as McGhee will take up the Hearts job with an unalloyed conviction that he will have complete control. No matter the assurances from figures such as Campbell Ogilvie, the managing director, McGhee must expect that sooner or later he will have to clash with Romanov about team selection.
Still, the owner's intransigence is now common knowledge. If everything goes belly up very quickly because of disputes between himself and the owner, McGhee knows that the bulk of the footballing community will acquit him of any blame.
More generally, although high-risk in terms of McGhee's own desired career progression, a move from Fir Park to Tynecastle this summer is more rational than it might appear from the outside. He might have got lucky and fought through a couple of ties in the Uefa Cup, but otherwise he has probably taken Motherwell as far as they can go: if he were to stay, he would merely be treading water.
Having reached the shortlist for the Scotland job when it last became available, McGhee clearly has ambitions of reaching the top of his profession. He knows that his relative success at Motherwell was not enough to persuade the SFA to give him a chance with the national team, and the obvious conclusion is that he should therefore move up to a bigger club.
He might have been tempted by vacancies at Celtic or Aberdeen, but neither Gordon Strachan nor Jimmy Calderwood is going anywhere at present.
He has previously shown an interest in managing Hibs, but at present Mixu Paatelainen looks likely to stay in the post at Easter Road for another couple of years.
Which leaves Hearts as the only available stepping stone to higher things. If he turns things round at Tynecastle over the next year, he will have strengthened his hand if Strachan decides to quit as Celtic manager a year from now. Becoming Hearts manager will represent a marriage of convenience for McGhee, and many of the minor irritations of the job will be smoothed away by that £350,000 dowry.
The full article contains 938 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
