Why Uche Ikpeazu's Hearts career didn't go according to plan

Former Hearts striker Uche Ikpeazu celebrating victory over Hibs at Easter Road in September last year. Picture: SNS

Ninety-one minutes into a Scottish Premiership match at Tynecastle, Nikola Katic pivoted and ran towards his own goal as he sought to deal with a speculative ball over the top. With a comfortable advantage over the nearest opponent, the Rangers defender was a clear favourite to get to the bouncing ball first and retain possession for his side without too much fuss. But Katic could hear footsteps coming. They were charging towards him. After an entire afternoon of being harassed and pushed around, he was more than a little rattled. This was football PTSD.

With the footsteps getting a little closer, the ball sitting up a little more than he would've liked and team-mate Allan McGregor unwilling to come and collect, Katic was pressed into a decision: try and knock it back with his knee to McGregor, a simple play but one which would surely conclude with him being barged to the deck once more by his enthusiastic rival, or just get the ball out of the park.

Katic was done. He took the easy way out, clumsily depositing the ball into the stands and enduring roars of appreciation from the home crowd for the man in maroon who had reduced him to such a timid mess.

This was Uche Ikpeazu at his finest. A complete bully of a striker who could make life hell for centre-backs up and down the country. Steven Gerrard describes his performance as "unplayable" that day as a struggling Hearts side won an unexpected point against a Rangers team gunning for the title.

There are so many other fitting examples that could have started off this ode to the recently departed Hearts bruiser, like the goal he scored at Easter Road, where he managed to touch, turn and shoot while wearing Ryan Porteous like a coat, or when he knocked down two Livingston defenders simultaneously just minutes after making a long-awaited return to the team from injury.

Battering ram

"Probably the strongest guy in the league," according to Hibs defender Darren McGregor. "There were a couple of times when I tried to wrestle him and 99 times out of a hundred I’d normally win but not with the big guy."

“He is a handful and awkward to play against," said Scott McKenna after the striker, on one of several occasions, won the battle against the highly-rated Scotland international defender. However, McKenna did add something that was quite perceptive about Ikpeazu's style that was ultimately part of his downfall in Scottish football and why he never consistently managed to replicate performances like the aforementioned one against Rangers: "I wouldn’t say he crosses the line but he has to have a handful of your shirt before he can do anything with the ball.”

Getting into a battle with Ikpeazu was not the way to defeat the striker. His move was always to initial contact with defenders, back into them and then quickly spin around and away with a deceptive quickness of movement. The defender then had the choice to wave goodbye or haul him down.

In just his third league game for Hearts, an away trip to Kilmarnock, Ikpeazu was ridiculously dominant. He won a stream of fouls by using his patented move time and again on Kirk Broadfoot and Stuart Findlay, then headed in the only goal of the game on 81 minutes. He looked such an essential part of the side that a foot injury sustained in a 1-0 win over Motherwell, which put him out for four months, was viewed as a devastating blow to Hearts' chances that season. When he returned Hearts weren't the same team and neither was Ikpeazu.

Downfall

It would be easy to blame that injury, or some of the other knocks he received over his two years in Edinburgh, for him failing to reach his potential, but in this writer's eye his displays would have dipped regardless of whether he avoided that injury in a clash with Fir Park keeper Trevor Carson.

Opponents just had no idea who they were dealing with when he first arrived, but that soon changed. Steve Clarke, then manager of Kilmarnock, watched as the former Cambridge United hero battered his famously resolute back-line in their first encounter, but in the next match he was ready. He told his players not to engage with the striker. Instead, ‘back off a yard or two and wait for him to give you the ball back’, was the instruction.

For his undoubted strengths on a football field, there were also some clear weaknesses to his game. He was clumsy on the ball, often showed poor decision-making in the final third and didn't score anywhere near as often as Hearts would have liked. In the end he finished with 10 goals in 55 appearances; a rate that's not particularly impressive even before you factor in that five of those 10 goals were netted against lower-league sides in the cup.

That's one reason why it was perhaps a bit of a shock to see him leave the club this week. Though Ikpeazu couldn't do enough to keep his team in the Premiership, his record against Championship teams would suggest he'd be a useful asset when the lower-league season gets underway in October. Then again, if new manager Robbie Neilson believes he can get a better player and remove the player's wage from the books (he signed an extension in 2019, so will be a high-earner), not to mention Ikpeazu’s assumed desire to play in the second-tier of English football, then the transfer makes sense for everyone involved.

Goodbye

In the harsh world of football, it doesn't matter what type of person you are or whether you're clearly popular in the dressing room. If you aren't doing the business on the park then fans will turn against you in numbers. But Hearts fans never really did that with the man they fondly referred to as ‘Big Uche’. He was never really singled out for criticism, booed or sarcastically applauded off the park. Everyone so desperately wanted him to succeed and picked up on any crumb of optimism that he ultimately would turn good.

This quote from his former manager probably best explains why that was the case, and why news of his departure was greeted with more "good luck" responses than there were those who sneered "good riddance".

“Every single fan wants to be Uche," said Craig Levein. "They want to be the Hearts centre forward and would run about like mad if they got the jersey and Uche does that."

It also helps that he scored twice at Easter Road.

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Why Uche Ikpeazu's Hearts career didn't go according to plan - and why the fans hold few grudges

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