Steven Naismith has admitted that recruitment was the weakest part of his spell in charge of Heart of Midlothian, saying he made mistakes that left the club short of what it needed. He said his biggest error was not bringing in another striker to support Lawrence Shankland, Liam Boyce, James Wilson and Kenneth Vargas.
The 39-year-old said Hearts needed players who could arrive and make an immediate impact in the second season, when the squad ended up relying on four strikers and still fell short. He said he was a major part of the recruitment process, but added that he had no recruitment experience and that the work was shared with Joe Savage, the recruitment team, the club and the board.
Naismith’s comments matter because they explain, in his own words, why Hearts’ squad planning looked strong in one campaign and then unravelled in the next. He had one full season in charge and finished third, but the next campaign began badly enough for Hearts to find themselves bottom of the table before he was sacked and replaced by Neil Critchley.
He said the summer between those two seasons should have brought more than it did. Hearts signed James Penrice, Blair Spittal and Yan Dhanda, along with Musa Drammeh, Gerard Taylor, Daniel Oygoke, Malachi Boateng and Andres Salazar, but he said only Penrice and Spittal could be judged clear successes. He also said Liam Boyce broke down, James Wilson still needed more from him, Vargas did not score enough goals and Shankland did not reach the heights he has shown since, especially during the period when there was uncertainty over whether he would leave.
That is where the frustration sits. Naismith said Hearts were trying to search around the world for players, but he still felt the squad needed footballers who could come in and hit the ground running. He said that was naivety on his part, because he assumed four strikers would be enough, and he later looked back on that decision as one of the things he had gone away thinking about.
The club’s later move toward Jamestown Analytics shows why his reflection lands now. Hearts struck the partnership soon after he left, and Naismith said Jamestown was a game-changer as soon as he heard about it. He also said he could have benefited from using Jamestown Analytics and from working with Graeme Jones, with the club later seeing the reward in signings such as Harry Milne, Alexandros Kyziridis and Claudio Braga and, after the appointment of Derek McInnes, a title challenge that suggested the recruitment process had finally caught up with the ambition.
For Naismith, the sharpest part of the lesson is simple: Hearts did not just need more players, they needed the right kind of help at the right time. He has now said plainly that he should have had more support in recruitment, and Hearts’ later rise suggests that the gap he identified was real.
