Chief Executive Officer Andrew McKinlay spoke to Hearts TV to provide an update to supporters given recent events at the club.
The full interview is currently available to watch across the club’s social platforms, and the full Q&A will be published on the Official Hearts Website today.
For now, below are the takeaway points from the chat.
On parting company with Steven Naismith, Gordon Forrest and Frankie McAvoy:
I think we know that the football over the last few weeks has been difficult. We had been hoping – the fanbase, all of us – that we could turn this around but it became evident to me, and to others, at the weekend that we just weren’t seeing signs of it turning around.
I went into these two fixtures, St Mirren and Ross County, feeling that we needed, at the very least, four points and hopefully six. We had a very average second-half performance (at St Mirren) and that, unfortunately, left me in no doubt that we had to look at making a change.
On the decision to recently grant new contracts to the previous management team:
The deals that we had with Steven and his assistants were two-year deals with an option. Steven and I had conversations over the summer around the fact – particularly around his assistants more so than him - that they would be going into the final year of their deals if we didn’t exercise the option, and they would start looking for other jobs. I get that. Any one of us, if we think our job is going to finish at a finite time, would do that.
He was keen that we didn’t have that instability amongst the coaching team. I looked at the options, we had a discussion as a Board and we agreed to exercise the option to give them the stability that they had asked for.
I think it’s important, because the inference from many people is that it was such a stupid decision and cost us a lot of money, that without going into absolute detail I can say that the way we structure our contracts, compensation that gets paid either way didn’t change and doesn’t change. What we’ve ended up having to do here is no different than if we had exercised that option or not.
On the new manager search and timeline:
Where we are now is that we’ve had our own lists and we’re also working with an analytics company. I can’t really say too much about who that company is, there has been a lot of press reporting recently but for commercial confidentiality reasons I can’t go into too much detail, but we are working with an analytics company.
Now, what does that mean? Does it just mean that they will tell us who we should have as the manager? No, it doesn’t mean that. What it means is that they will be part of the process and they will have some views on some individuals and we will also feed them any individuals we think might be right and any applications we might have.
They’ll all be fed into that analytics and that will give us an idea of a ranking of managers. But that ranking is just based on analytics, you then have to take that and look at those individuals; are they within our ability to get them, are they in current roles or not, there are various factors – will they fit into our culture, what style of football will they play, you can go on and on, and the analytics won’t give you all those answers. You have to do a lot of your own work and that’s the same as when it comes to recruiting players through analytics as well. The analytics will be a very important part of the process.
On the interim management team and what has been discussed:
I’m thankful to Liam and his guys for stepping in at this difficult time. I think that he was the right person to bring forward, given the work he’s done with the B Team but also he has his European Pro Licence, he has experience managing a team at Premiership level so I think he’s the right person for this interim period.
He is also aware that we are looking externally for the longer term and he fully understands that and appreciates the reasons why we’re doing that. I have the utmost respect for Liam, I think he’s a very good football coach and I think he’ll do well for us for as long as he’s in this role.
On reports of possible outside investment in Hearts:
This is quite a difficult one for me to say too much. I will always be as open and as transparent as I can be but there are certain things that obviously come with commercial confidence.
Until such a time we have a deal with anyone, I can’t actually talk about who it’s with or what it would look like. That would be entirely wrong and I would also be heavily criticised, and rightly so, where I to say anything that jeopardised any potential deal we’re looking at.
The one thing that I would like to be very, very clear on, because it’s not just a Foundation point, it’s a point for the club and the club strategy and I’ve made comments in the past about my views on multi-club ownership, and not being hugely supportive of them; I want to be clear that when I was talking about that, I was talking in the context of feeder clubs. I do not want Scotland to become a feeder league. I, and the Board and FOH’s firm position is that we will not become a feeder club for any club elsewhere. We will not have a formal link with any other football club.
Anything that we do would be done on the basis of there may be an individual involved, or they may not be, that has involvement with other football clubs but there will be no links between those clubs.
Message to the fans:
I would just ask, please get behind the team and please give them your full backing. I said to them when I spoke to them that yes, they might’ve let people down but I believed in them and believe that they are a good football team and they showed that last year. If we can get together as one we can turn the corner and we will hopefully just look back on this period as a blip.
