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IAN CATHRO is adamant he will not allow results to change the way he manages Hearts, insisting he has to be true to himself.
And the Tynecastle head coach claims any other approach would be fake and risk failure.
Cathro has come in for heavy criticism in recent days, with last Wednesday’s Scottish Cup exit to bitter rivals Hibs being followed by Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to Partick Thistle.
It leaves the Gorgie men without a victory in their last four games and with just four wins in Cathro’s 14 games in charge.
There is grave concern amongst supporters that the 30-year-old, who is in his first job as a head coach after assistant’s roles at Rio Ave, Valencia and Newcastle United, is not cut out to be Hearts manager.
However, the Dundonian remains confident in his own ability to ease his new-look side through a sticky spell and insists he will do so without changing his approach to the job.
Otherwise, he believes, his squad would have every reason not to have faith in him.
Speaking ahead of Wednesday night’s home clash with Ross County, he said: “My take is that there is only one person in the world that you can be – which is you.
“Some people know you, some people don’t.
FALL DOWN
“If you move from one position to another, with different demands and different dynamics, different responsibilities, the only way you can do that, and the only way you can lead people, is by those people believing that everything you do is real and is natural.
“But, if in order to go from one position to another, you need to change yourself, you are going to fall down.
“They are things that are either natural to you and how you are – how you live, how you think, how you act with people and how people are with you.
“How they see you and the message that you pass over, they want to buy that and understand.
“Or it is not natural. If you need to change in a way which is unnatural, it means you are not a fit for doing those things.
“As soon as something is not real or not natural, you are not right.”
Cathro is aware that concerns have been raised over his recruitment of nine non-Scottish players in January, but insists it had not even been mentioned when the side began February with comprehensive wins over Rangers and Motherwell.
RESPONSIBILITY
He is confident that the line of questioning will disappear when the Jambos begin to play to their full potential.
With the club’s newly-laid pitch to make its debut against County, he added: “The result controls the narrative. If we reflect on both [the Hibs and Partick] games, we’ve had a bad one, we’ve let people down. We know that.
“Ultimately, we’ve not done enough inside ourselves to show the strength in our own minds to keep making the right decisions for the game to be positive for us.
“If that happens, we play better, we do things better, we get a positive result, then nobody thinks that.
“If we don’t, we allow people to think that, write that, feel that. It’s our responsibility.
“The only way to discuss those things sensibly is to recognise those things would not even be thought about if we had done things better – which we had done previously with these players and we will do again with these players.
“We have allowed that to be there and that’s our responsibility. Does that mean it’s true? That’s for people to decide.”
