ANDREW DRIVER never played under Craig Levein at Hearts. The winger was a 16-year-old sometime first-team squad member, still two years away from a senior debut, when the Tynecastle outfit's 2003-04 campaign marked Levein's final full one in charge – the last time a manager saw through an entire season with the Gorgie club.
Now Csaba Laszlo is about to end that sequence. And from his own football upbringing, Driver knows it is no simple coincidence that the Hungarian has succeeded where the six men to have followed Levein in the Vladimir Romanov era have failed.
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son enough, indeed, for the now 21-year-old to pay Laszlo the highest compliment.
"When I first moved into the team under Craig Levein he was a top manager," he says. "As young boy you could sense the aura he created about the place and you have great respect for him. Csaba is definitely the first manager since Craig Levein you have got complete respect for. He's totally got a hold of the dressing room. I didn't really have much time to work under Levein, so for me (Laszlo is] probably the top manager I have worked with."
Driver does not see it as purely coincidental either that his nomination for PFA Scotland Young Player of the Year has come following a season in which his game has been refined by just the one tutor.
Consistency of selection and coaching are crucial to wingers. In Laszlo, Driver has found someone who has not only developed a full picture of his strengths and weakness through daily involvement but proved himself "the kind of manager who wants to work on your weaknesses".
"He strives for perfection and takes me out of training at the end of one session every week to work on my finishing and final ball," the player says. "And he has looked for me to improve on other things I didn't even know needed that."
Initially, Laszlo encouraged Driver to run at full-backs every time he picked up possession in the final third. Now, he tells him to mix it up because, the winger believes, he now has greater confidence in the passing and link-up play which are the subject of regular training ground drills.
According to Driver, Laszlo has improved the football club beyond all recognition because, unlike his recent predecessors, he is patently running the football club, and not deferring to Romanov on team matters.
"You know fine well whatever is going on comes from him and you only have one man to impress, which is massive," Driver says. "There were some crazy things going on before which you knew the manager had no control over. And when the person that you are supposed to be answering to isn't the one that's going to drop you for the weekend, it gives the wrong impression to some players and they can take advantage of that."
Driver, meanwhile, remains cagey about the prospects of one day being selected for Scotland. Born and raised in Oldham, but Lothian-based for almost a decade, under a gentleman's agreement between the four home nations he is English in international terms. That could change under proposals forwarded by SFA chief executive Gordon Smith to allow players with British passports that are naturalised in any of the home nations to play for their adopted countries. "I think a change to the gentleman's agreement would be a good idea, and if anything changes, I'll think about it," says Driver, who played for Scotland schoolboys.
"We have another boy at Hearts, Conrad Balatoni, who is in the same situation. He has been here since he was six and actually went for a couple of trials and was going to get chosen by Scotland under-15s and then at the last minute they realised he was English. I think he was a bit upset. It's a bit farcical where people from other countries may be able to do it. If someone has been here since they were young and Scotland made them what they are it is a shame not to let them play for their country."
