Alan Maybury

This week’s look at a Hearts player from the past focuses on a man who, like Mark De Vries last week, has just returned to the SPL with another club.

Alan Maybury, who played in the same Hearts sides as De Vries under Craig Levein, has just signed for Aberdeen after a fortnight of rumours linking the Republic Of Ireland international with a return to Tynecastle. To be honest although I’m not sure how he’s been playing recently, Hearts really could have done with someone like Maybury coming to the club to at least help to solidify one of the full-back positions, as we are in deep trouble in those areas just now. But it wasn’t to be and now he’s at Aberdeen, where I’m sure he’ll prove to be a useful acquisition for Jimmy C and co.

Maybury was signed by Craig Levein from Leeds United for a fee of, if my memory serves me correctly, around £100,000. He was a young right-back (23-24-ish) with experience (albeit limited) of playing in the Premiership and had been capped by his country at under-21 level, so on paper at least he sounded promising.

Hearts had been crying out for a decent right-back for many years when Maybury came to the club. In fact, with the exception of current caretaker manager Stevie Frail, I would have to say that this position is one that we have always struggled to fill with any sort of quality, so the signing was greeted with a fair amount of optimism by the supporters.

Maybury quickly demonstrated his abilities as a solid right back at Hearts. He was a bit uncertain at times in the early days (I seem to remember him passing the ball straight out of the park at least once a game for the first couple of months!), but once he’d found his feet he was as capable a player in that position as Hearts had had in years, and certainly far steadier than anyone we’ve had since. He did pretty much everything that a modern full back should be good at to an acceptable level: had good pace, generally good timing in the tackle and provided excellent support in attack. He also had a hell of a shot on him, as one magnificent last minute volleyed goal against Partick Thistle at Tynecastle demonstrated – he absolutely murdered that ball into the top corner from an unfeasibly tight angle, which although sounds ludicrous was almost reminiscent of the famous Van Basten goal at Euro ’88!

However Maybury was certainly not without his faults, with the most obvious one being his questionable temperament. He was a very competitive and hard player, which was one of the main reasons I liked him, but this could often boil over and when this happened, he was prone to being petulant and mouthing off at the referee. This happened a few times and resulted in more bookings than were necessary for Maybury, and I’m quite sure that opponents would often target him before matches as being a guy that they could get to, even if he was technically sound as a full back.

The biggest shame of Maybury’s entire Hearts career though, was Levein’s decision to permanently switch him to left back to accommodate Robbie Neilson on the right. As readers of this site know I was and am a fan of Levein as a manager, but this to me was a ludicrous decision, as it effectively weakened the team on both sides. Initially Neilson had come into the side because of an injury to Maybury, and because Robbie had been reasonably steady in there, Levein decided that he couldn’t drop him and instead brought Maybury back into the team at left back. Now it wasn’t as though Maybury couldn’t play in this position, because he could to a reasonable degree, but he was infinitely more effective on the other side and was never able to be the asset there that he had been on the right. It also left the fans with a lasting impression of Maybury’s abilities not being quite as good as it should have been, as he simply favoured his right side too much to be truly effective on the left.

But those latter points aside, Alan Maybury was for me one of the two best right backs that Hearts have had in the last 20 years along with Stevie Frail. I realise that his competition for this accolade isn’t exactly wonderful, but he was a good player by SPL standards and as I said above, I’d much rather have him in the side now than Robbie Neilson or Jose Goncalves.