DC92

I wasn't massively down on appointing Naismith because my expectations were low, but I agree the announcement had extremely bad vibes. Unfortunately I can very easily picture it featuring in the first tweet of a viral Twitter thread entitled "Hearts 23/24: The Banter Season". A couple of early signings might help get things back on track.

Given Aberdeen are such a relentless trophy-winning machine you'd have to assume they'd have hoovered those up if they'd been around. Luckily for them the same logic apparently doesn't apply to Livi or Caley Thistle.

You're absolutely right mate, you've proven to everyone here that Aberdeen are a massive, famous club and Hearts are irrelevant and small. Some people could have been confused, but thankfully you were here to enter this discussion about our new Technical Director - which some might have thought had nothing at all to do with Aberdeen - to put us right.

See, I thought Hearts had won the league the same number of times as Aberdeen, but I forgot trophies from 60 years ago don't count and ones from 40 years ago count double.

On the Pro Licence stuff, my impression was that you needed one to be a permanent manager in the top flight, but the club statement only mentions it being a requirement for "European competition", which I take to mean the Conference League. Is that right? If it's just a Europe requirement and McAvoy has to be nominally in charge for those (let's be honest, two) games, then I'm not that bothered. If it's a requirement for the league and we have McAvoy nominally in charge, but Naismith de facto in charge, then it's an issue imo. Firstly because it would be an obvious circumvention of the regulations which leaves us open to penalties and secondly because it creates the potential for confused leadership if the club has to outwardly act as if one person is calling the shots while internally acting differently. McKinlay is an ex-SFA COO and was a member of the UEFA Legal Committee for 3 years so you'd assume he'll be on top of this but... this is Hearts.

"You're saying they gave him a different job title for administrative reasons? This is just like the time I enormously shat myself."

The technical director is a coach who picks the team and sets the tactics but isn't the manager. Not sure what's difficult to understand tbqh.

Unfortunately the Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen jobs just aren't as attractive as they should be. The pay isn't great and the minimum criteria for success (finishing 3rd) also happens to be a ceiling. If you look at their appointments over the last couple of decades (with the exception of the Romanov years at Hearts) it's near enough 100% rookies, rejects from England, and guys who did alright at smaller Scottish clubs, because that's all they can get. Naismith doesn't excite me but none of the other realistic candidates did either. "2 wins in 7" is fair enough, but he also had 1 defeat in his last 6 (against Celtic, with 10 men) in a tough run of fixtures and the performances in the home games (with 11 men) were probably a step up from anything we'd seen under Neilson all season. That improvement could be new technical director bounce, or it could be because he has something about him. f**k knows. It'll be interesting how the coaching structure works in practice. What happens when some journo starts asking awkward questions about it at press conferences?

Why? There's nothing stopping him being a coach. We'd have pay a healthy premium for him to be head coach, but thankfully technical director carries no such penalties.

Steven Naismith has led Hearts to a 4-game unbeaten run in the Scottish Premiership. At 36 years old, he's the youngest manager technical director in the league. Hearts won't pay a £22,000 fine each time they play because he's the technical director and you can't prove otherwise.

If it's Naismith or Cifuentes then it isn't an inspiring choice but that's the risk you take when you punt a manager without having a standout candidate lined up. It's why (despite his obvious flaws) I was never that enthusiastic about ditching Neilson until his last couple of weeks. As for choosing between them, Cifuentes obviously has more experience than Naismith, but imo his CV looks worse than Neilson's and no better than someone like Jack Ross, so I don't get the appeal. His only notable achievement seems to be finishing 3rd once with a team that finished 4th, 3rd, 8th and 5th in the seasons prior to his arrival and now he has them sitting in 10th. They also got to a cup final which they lost to 7th-place Malmö. If it's a choice between taking a punt on a rookie who's shown some glimpses of promise and demonstrated he can get a bit more out of the current squad in his admittedly short time in charge, or taking a punt on the Scandi-based Stephen Robinson, then the former punt seems a bit more sensible to me.

Hibs doing what they needed to do to finish 4th would have been excellent but Hearts fans politely applauding their team for actually doing so is a minter. Levels.

Thoroughly unmoved by the idea of avoiding the further embarrassment of finishing below that dogshit and playing a couple of qualifiers. Thoroughly enjoying at the seethe from the Hibees here. Complaints about the other team "overcelebrating" are justified about 1% of the time and pathetic, tear-sodden rage the other 99%. The fact is you had an enormous opportunity for a huge GIRUY here and fucked it. The lukewarm "celebrations" reflected that. Over to you, Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

When you consider it could've been us with the extra home game against St Mirren and playing Celtic when they're on holiday rather than aiming to wrap up the title, I don't think the fixtures could have been any worse. That result for Aberdeen on Sunday has probably sealed it anyway. The psychological boost of keeping the winning run going while also maintaining that margin for error should see them through. A 2 or 3 point gap with worse goal difference might have provoked a wobble. The game I go back to in my head is the Rangers game at Tynecastle when Neilson treated it as a free hit to trial his mental tactics instead of just playing a normal, solid team and seeing if we could get a result. It was an unbelievably stupid act of hubris which ended a long unbeaten run and dented confidence. The team selection at Pittodrie when a point would have kept them 7 behind was almost as bad. Anyway, I'm finding it hard to feel too hard done by at not finishing third this season. There's no question we'd have more points without the injuries but those were known about early on and performances have ranged between dreadful and mediocre for the most part. Even when we had a bit of a gap in February I never felt 100% confident because the tactics blatantly were not working by that point (admittedly I didn't think Aberdeen were the most likely candidates to overtake us). The only glimmer of positivity to this shit show is that Aberdeen will probably be forced to hire Robson now. Okay, he might end up being a brilliant manager for all we know, but there isn't much to go on at the moment. This winning run started when expectations were zero and they've pretty much ridden the crest of a wave since. Our results in December/January are proof of the power of momentum in football and how that can distract from the bigger picture.

Don't know if it's legit/final but this is pretty much the worst possible outcome for us. Playing Celtic rather than St Mirren at home, and on the weekend they'll be aiming to confirm the title. Aberdeen at home to St Mirren for a third time which gives them an extra home game against a non-OF team compared to us (16 v 15). Their home game against Celtic which they'd probably have lost anyway gets switched to Celtic Park after they'll have won the league.

In 14/15 we were moving into a new era after years of financial uncertainty, we had a bunch of exciting young players with a strong team bond and competing for the title felt like a genuine achievement given the circumstances. We also got big wins in the first two games and rode the crest of a wave for the rest of the season. As pointed out above, performances weren't particularly good in the big games after that, especially in the derbies. In 20/21 we started with a bloated, unbalanced and unhappy squad, there were no fans in the stadiums and we were probably more unattractive to prospective players because we were playing a shorter season which started months later than the Premiership. After we lost the cup final and basically wrapped up the league in January we were just playing pointless games in empty stadiums against defensive teams with a fairly shite squad. In sharp contrast to 14/15, that's a recipe for dire viewing. I think the answer lies there rather than a major change in philosophy from Neilson.

I think you're right about the point he's trying to make, but it is a bit of a waffle and the repetition of "the decision's been made" introduces some ambiguity as to who actually made the decision. I think it's pretty obvious that there are non-football reasons at play that Naismith doesn't want to get into.

We also have an extra home game after the split. If we win on Saturday it'll be more than a glimmer. That feels like a remote possibility at the moment though. Just too many dysfunctional parts of the team to fix in a few days.

It might help the atmosphere in the dressing room but it won't fix the fact most of the rest of our midfield is shite, unfit or crocked.

It isn't revisionism. He was good to begin with (the Motherwell game we won with 10 men springs to mind). Then team performances suffered when teams started targeting him in Jan/Feb. The fact Neilson wouldn't change the gameplan despite this meant he became an active hindrance on the pitch. All of that will be reflected in opinions expressed at the time. Revisionism would be to say he's been shite all along (unless you thought that all along, obviously).

Pretty sure Snodgrass took the huff with Steve Clarke as well before he retired from internationals? He looked good at first but clearly became far too much of an influence on the tactics and hasn't contributed anything positive for months. A bit of a disaster of a signing which we'd probably never have made if Boyce hadn't got injured.

Obviously options are severely limited for an interim role but not sure about Naismith. Obviously he ticks the pashun box but on the pitch he usually seemed to channel that into petulance/frustration rather than providing inspiration when things weren't going well.

There have been rumours about splits in the dressing room and discontent with Neilson among the squad for weeks. Based on Kingsley's quotes yesterday, the players had a half-hour meeting after the game on Saturday without the management present. When it becomes players v manager, something has to give and it's not going to be the players. Whether Neilson did a good job or whether he deserved to be sacked isn't the relevant question. There was only one pragmatic option at this point and thankfully the board have recognised that. Oh, and needless to say that sacking Neilson doesn't automatically fix the issues in the squad, but it is the first step.

Andre Villas-Boas Some people are going to be very disappointed when they realise Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen haven't been perpetually digging around in the bargain bin of rookies, out of work English League One managers and guys who did alright for St Mirren for no reason.

Did ok the last time he was given an interim role at PNE (well enough to get the job permanently) so that would seem logical. I guess Naismith for the assistant role would also make sense given they've probably been working closely together.