Has Elvis Burnt His Bridges?

There’s currently a lot of debate going on amongst Hearts fans about the way that Steven Pressley has conducted himself on more than one occasion in respect of his former club recently.

The man who was once seen as our club’s ‘Captain Fantastic’ and arguably most popular player has even become something of a hate figure to some as a result of what they perceive as disrespectful and spite-filled behaviour by Pressley towards his former employers and supporters in recent times.

Now before I go any further, I want to make clear my take on Pressley’s exit from Tynecastle. I have never once grudged him leaving Hearts to join Celtic last season. The guy had clearly had enough of the behind-the-scenes goings on at Tynecastle and took it upon himself to try and do what he felt was morally correct to get some solutions put in place, hence the ‘Riccarton 3’ press conference. This eventually left Elvis with little option but to leave Hearts and when the country’s biggest club then came in and offered him a contract, an offer that gave him the chance to win more trophies as well as allowing his young family to stay in Scotland, it was always the proverbial ‘no-brainer’ wasn’t it?

One of the things that has annoyed Hearts supporters the most has been Pressley’s antics in the matches he’s played in against his former club since his controversial departure. In the first one, at Tynecastle, he was roundly booed by the home support as he took the field, a sure sign that the Tynecastle dictatorship had managed to brainwash their customers into seeing Pressley as a traitor. Was it therefore any real surprise that he celebrated Celtic’s undeserved 2-1 win that day with a fist-clenching, chest-beating display at the end of the game? Surely this is only human nature. The guy had given our club everything he had for 8+ years and here were the Hearts fans turning on him, preferring to believe their controversial new owners over a player whose integrity had never been in question during his entire time with the club. Who betrayed who here I wonder?

Since then, he has been criticised for appearing to play like ‘a man possessed’ in the subsequent return fixture at Parkhead, which Hearts won 3-1. It’s not a match that I witnessed live so can’t really comment too much on it, but apparently Pressley appeared to be charging up and down the park ‘more than any other Celtic player’ to try and get his team back into the game and indeed, did manage to score his team’s consolation goal that day. I’m sorry, but some people have very short and selective memories. This is exactly the same sort of thing that he used to do for Hearts when they were in similar predicaments. OK so he was never exactly a goal machine, but it was never for want of trying and I’ve often seen Elvis charging forward late in games to try and salvage a point.

And anyway, so what if he did want to win more than any other player? Would that not be understandable given his relationship with his former employers? I know that if I left a job under a cloud and felt betrayed by my former boss, I’d want to shove it right up them when I got the chance. So I wouldn’t have a problem with this. Unfortunately though, many Hearts fans have taken the view that he’s now a traitor that was always in it to get one over on Hearts. A load of absolute nonsense of course.

The only thing that I’d take Pressley to task on are his recent comments in the press about the cup finals of the past two seasons. Now I appreciate that he’s a Celtic player and therefore when he’s given airtime in public, he needs to talk positively about his experience of winning the cup with them. But to insinuate that this win was more satisfying than last year when he captained Hearts to the trophy was very ill-advised. Everyone knows that this is not true, even the Celtic fans, who I’m quite sure would not have bothered if Elvis had admitted that in public anyway. Whether or not Elvis meant to insinuate this I’m not sure, but a man as experienced as he is in dealing with the media should really have been a bit smarter here I think.

And Elvis most definitely should have been smarter when he referred to Hearts as a ‘provincial club’ when talking about last year’s final. He makes himself sound just as ignorant as some of those condescending west-coast tabloid journalists by saying something like this. They seem to have this notion that anyone outside of Glasgow is a ‘provincial’ club – someone should ask them what they mean by that. For the record, the definition of the word ‘provincial’ is: ‘an inhabitant of the regions outside the capital city of a country’. So I hope that Elvis enjoyed his latest trophy win with a ‘provincial’ club on Saturday!

But as for the other accusations aimed at Elvis, I can’t agree with them I’m afraid.