Craig Levein confident Ian Cathro has learned from his turbulent start as Hearts manager and will come good

The Tynecastle outfit slipped from second in the Ladbrokes Premiership to fifth – a decline that saw them miss out on a European place – as a result and were knocked out of the William Hill Scottish Cup by their city rivals Hibs.

Cathro’s far-from-scintillating start has created unrest among the Gorgie faithful, a sizeable number of whom were highly sceptical about his appointment in the first place, and very few envisage a bright future. Indeed, many doubt he will last beyond Christmas.

But Craig Levein, the director of football who championed the 30-year-old, stressed he retained their complete backing and confidence in a rare appearance in front of the media at the Oriam performance centre on the outskirts of Edinburgh yesterday.

Levein, who revealed that Hearts have employed a company which use statistics to identify signing targets, remains adamant they have an exciting and innovative young coach who is capable of flourishing and enjoying great success despite the evidence to the contrary.

“When you make a decision about staff you’ve got to back people,” he said. “We go through a long process before we decide who gets the job and the reasons for Ian haven’t changed.

“There is no point in forecasting. We just have to see how it goes, but I have every faith in him and Ann (club owner Budge) has every faith in him.”

The former Dundee United, Hearts, Leicester City and Scotland manager believes he has seen Cathro, who had never managed a club before taking over, develop in his first months in the job and is optimistic the win ratio will improve in the 2017/18 campaign .

“I do believe it’s a young man’s game now,” he said. “But if you put a young person in charge then they’ve got to learn very quickly and I think he’s learned a lot of stuff really quickly.

“I really do believe that the job now requires a hell of a lot of energy and it also requires to understand the modern day player. Ian understands the modern day player. I think the older you get the further you get away from what the players are like.”

There have been suggestions that Cathro, who never played professionally, had lost the dressing room this season because he fails to command the respect of his players. Levein, though, dismissed those claims. “If you spoke to the players they’d disagree with you,” he said.

The 52-year-old feels, strangely given that Cathro had a reputation as being a tactical mastermind prior to his appointment, it has simply taken him time to adjust to the demands of Scottish football.

“Every league has its way of playing,” he said. “Scottish football has this kind of unique way of playing. If you look outside the Old Firm, every team plays the same way.

“If you can’t deal with a constant bombardment and pressure, either from direct balls or crosses, then you lose goals. We’ve played some matches this season where I think we’ve been fantastic, but we’ve got beat.

“I think Ian’s philosophy at the start was ‘we’ll be better than everyone else’. But he’s very quickly realised that if we don’t deal with what other people can deal with then we can’t impose ourselves in games.”

Levein added: “We talk every day. For me the attraction of Ian is, once we get beyond that and defending these situations, I get excited about the possibilities. I watch him in training, the players are buying into what he’s doing.

“But it’s quite difficult to gain momentum if you lose matches. It’s quite difficult to get players fully behind you if you’re not winning matches. So, once he gets this bit organised then the rest, I’m sure, will follow.”

Cathro has admitted there are many people in Scottish football who are, due to his age and his background, desperate to see him fail. Levein conceded that being thrust into the spotlight so suddenly had been hard for the former Rio Ave, Valencia and Newcastle United assistant.

“I can understand him feeling a bit sensitive at times,” he said. “It is not nice and I have been there once or twice myself. But it is difficult to put the knife in when the team is winning. Ian has to deal with that. He has created some amount of coverage and he is coping. Some days are better than others, but he is coping and positive.”

Levein admitted the last two transfer windows had not been successful ones for Hearts and explained they would be taking a revolutionary new approach to that crucial area in the coming weeks.

“There are various different ways of recruiting,” he said. “We will still continue to use contacts. But we have got access to a company who are finding players for us through stats. We are using the two things now. This window will be the first experiment as such and it looks promising.

“We are certainly getting names thrown up that we didn’t know about. Christophe (Berra) came from the old way of doing it and we will still do that, but I think we are just widening our net a little bit.”

Taking a “Moneyball” approach to their summer signings will do nothing to dispel the image many have of Ian Cathro being a football geek who is out of his depth as Hearts manager. Craig Levein will be undeterred.