Hearts Management Team – Thordarson And Butcher?

Well, I know that there were certain sources within the media who were ‘confident’ that Mark McGhee would be unveiled as the new Hearts manager just a couple of weeks ago, but if this morning’s tabloids are to be believed, then the new Tynecastle managerial ‘dream team’ is set to consist of Icelander Gudjon Thordarson and current Scotland Assistant Coach Terry Butcher.

Thordarson has been one of many names linked with Tynecastle over the past six months, but since first being mentioned as a contender for the job there has been pretty much no more talk of him coming to Edinburgh since, especially once the club’s interest in McGhee became public knowledge.

However it would now appear as though this guy is Vladimir Romanov’s ‘Plan B’, and according to some of the breakfast news on the radio this morning, he was indeed in Edinburgh for talks with the club yesterday.

I must admit I know very little about Thordarson or the style of football that his teams tend to adopt. A quick look at his resume on the internet will show you a real mixed bag of a record, ranging from great success in his homeland with IA Akranes, to mediocrity in the English lower leagues with Barnsley and Notts County, whom he managed as recently as 2006. In between he has had a commendable spell as Iceland’s national manager and also a half-decent stint with Stoke City at the turn of the century, again in the lower echelons of English football (he took Stoke into League One).

It’s a CV that is perhaps less than earth-shattering, but if he is indeed to be appointed as Hearts’ new manager, at least it appears as though we’re getting a genuine ‘football man’ into the post. I know there will be those who will argue that a certain Mr Malofeev could also be put into that category (and it’s a fair point), but let’s not get too pessimistic before it even begins.

Probably the most encouraging part of this rumour is the bit about Terry Butcher coming to Hearts as Thordarson’s assistant. I was always a fan of Butcher for the fine job he did at Motherwell and probably would have been happy for Hearts to have appointed him as manager a couple of years ago before George Burley got the job. He is a guy with vast experience in football at many different levels, which crucially includes very recent and current exposure to the game in Scotland. A man of this experience amongst many other qualities (not least the fact that the guy is a born ‘winner’) can surely only help to restore the element of professionalism to the first team squad that was so badly missing last season.

Will it happen? Well, there are some very confident-sounding reports doing the rounds at the moment that have the phrase ‘done deal’ written all over them, but given what happened with McGhee after seeing many such stories in connection with him, I think we should hang fire until we see the evidence. But it certainly does sound likely, and even if it’s not the appointment that many of us were hoping for, it’s a new manager for goodness sake – something that we’ve been crying out for for far too long. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it works out…..