After a year and a half at Hearts, Perry Kitchen’s future at the Scottish club is in doubt. He was stripped of his captaincy after Ian Cathro took over as manager, and new signingChristophe Berra will be captain next season.
“Naturally he’s not had a great time personally, having not been in the side as often as any player would haveliked, but that’s a personal thing,” said Cathro of Kitchen, who has one year left on his contract. “These are things that happen as a team evolves, grows and moves on. It’simportant that the role is a more constant role and it’s also important that we have a number of players who live their lives like that.
“My feeling is that we need morecaptains, we need more leaders, we need more players of stronger experience, of resilience, with more games in their background, good moments, bad moments, knowing they can go past a ten-minute spellin a game that is not going for us. We need more of those players.
“Throughout what was a very difficult five months or half a season, if you look at the performance level and theattitude and the influence level on the team Don Cowie has had, then you see a leader. What we needed to be able to do is bring in more of those. It’s not something you switch on and off,it’s who they are and how they behave.”
Wow, Cowie decided he did not like Kitchen. There are some personal hits in his statement.