Csaba hints at 8 Hearts departures in January

In the last of the recent Scotsman interviews (which have shown that Hearts do still seem to have ambitious plans for the future), manager Csaba Laszlo made some very interesting and reassuringly common-sense remarks.

Assessing what he had walked into back in July –
‘The team spirit was not the best. The players had no orientation. They were maybe trying their best but they had no direction. You saw in their faces they were down, they did not know what they had to do. I had to go back to basics, the first step was to make the team feel good about themselves, not on the field but in the dressing room.’

A sideways swipe at Stephen Frail perhaps –
‘I am not a big friend of the players, but I will protect them. I must not be invited to their birthday parties, but in the dressing room we must have unity. I do not copy anybody. I have my own rules, personality and my own experience.’

Tactics and formations –
‘Here, they prefer to have tall, physical guys but look at the football players of Real Madrid, look at Maradona, look at Argentina in Scotland recently; they were not all two metres tall but they played perfect football under pressure. You cannot bring a 4-4-2 system if you do not have the players to play 4-4-2. I use a system which, at the moment, I can play with this team.’

Looking ahead to what kind of players he wants –
“I want quick players. Players who can move very quick and think very quick. Because it is the one thing you cannot train. If a player is slow, maybe you can make him slightly quicker, but that is it. The rest, I can train”

He also said that his “ideal” would be to bring in 4 new players in January, and dispose of 8. So that raises the question in our minds – who would the 8 departures be ? Here are my thoughts –

Goalkeepers
Do we actually need 3 keepers of similar standard ? Or, put it another way, can we actually afford 3 ? Both Balogh and Kello are on loan, so my guess is that Csaba will choose one of them to compete with Jamie McDonald for the number 1 jersey – and offload the other. I simply can`t decide which of these two looks the more competent !!

Defenders
We don`t have a huge number of defenders, so I can`t see any leavers from this area.

Midfield
Well, we DO have a huge number of these guys !! For financial reasons, many fans reckon Kingston`s name is currently appearing on the fax machines of Europe. Personally, I think his flashes of skill and tenacity in most games win us a lot of points over a season. But a club with a turnover of £10m simply shouldn’t be paying half a million pounds per year to ANY player. So I`d be sorry to see him go, but it would be quite understandable. As for other candidates – how about Cesnauskis, Ksanavicius or perhaps Palazuelos ? Personally, I`d be happy to see Michael Stewart go – but I suspect Csaba likes his attitude and mobility.

Strikers
Its seems odd to be talking of offloading goalscorers – except, none of our strikers seem to score goals !! Most of us would agree that only Christian Nade looks to be worth keeping, and its too early to know if the injured Mike Tullberg is likely to solve any of our problems. Jamie Mole has worked hard in earlier games, but has managed only 1 goal – so I think his time may be up. It is also clear that Csaba does not rate Juho Makela (despite a regular place on the bench), so we can probably place a safe bet on him being offloaded in January.

I suspect that the remainder of the 8 will come from our players on loan at other clubs ( e.g. Calum Elliot at Livingston and Craig Sives at Queen of the South) plus any Academy boys who Csaba and John Murray feel are not up to standard.

Some fans fear that Vladimir will resume normal “service” by selecting Christophe Berra or Bruno Aguiar to be Hearts next big-money January sale, just as he did a year ago with Andrius Velicka. Surely he wouldn`t do that?? would he ?