Former England defender Terry Butcher and ex-Scotland boss Craig Levein have had their say on Steven Pressley.
Speaking about relationships between captains and managers for the BBC’s Sacked in the Morning Podcast, Levein was talking about his period as Pressley’s manager at Hearts.
Pressley, who was Carlisle manager in 2019 for less than 10 months, was appointed captain of Hearts in the 2001/02 season.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some bust-ups with some of my captains,” said Craig Levein, who also managed Leicester City.
“Steven Pressley at Hearts. Quite often with video analysis on Monday morning, Elvis would be very quick to make a comment.
“My comment to him would be ‘when you get the opportunity to be a manager, then you can make these decisions, not just now’. He was someone that would question, in a good way, why we were doing certain things.
“I think that is something that is quite common now.”
Levein added: “I had a great relationship with Steven Pressley and he did ask questions quite a lot, but generally they were in the best interests of the team.”
Tough tackling defender Terry Butcher replied: “First of all I must say about Steven Pressley, he would question everything as Craig says. He would even question a traffic light. Unbelievable.
“Did you have him Terry?” asked Levein.
Butcher then explains the pair were assistants together for the Scotland national team.
“You could always tell he was going to be a coach, because wow,” said Levein.
“He could talk a glass eye to sleep at times,” added Butcher.
“Lovely guy, lovely guy, but the questions he used to ask.”
Despite the joking between the pair, Levein said Pressley “was good as gold” and “his heart was in the right place”.
“Yeah, absolutely,” interjected Butcher.
“He tried his best in every single match, he was a really good captain, a really, really good captain and respected by the rest of the team,” said Levein.
“He was a tough lad, he wouldn’t shirk a challenge, but he did like to question a lot of the decisions the management made.
“At the same time, it was all for the right reasons. There is a place for that, of course there is.
“People who are just questioning for the sake of questioning and being a nuisance is a different thing altogether. You want people to ask questions because if the captain is asking the question it is generally something he has thought which is valid or something that other players are talking about.”
