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Elliot Calum [P Di Giacomo 45]
1 of 016 Andrius Velicka 63 L SPL H

Jim Jefferies ticks all the right boxes for Tynecastle’s uneasy hotseat


Phil Gordon

Wanted: a football manager. Must be a winner and must be British. Candidates should apply to Vladimir Romanov, Heart of Midlothian Football Club, c/o Kaunas, Lithuania. Mark X in the box should you wish to receive no publicity.

The man in the Tynecastle dugout today could be the answer to Hearts’ prayers. Not the home one, but the away one. Jim Jefferies fits the profile of the man Romanov is now seeking as he bids to halt the slide of his team after the Lithuanian millionaire’s two years of constant meddling and interference in his ever-changing cast of “head coaches”. Jefferies is the man who brought success to Hearts a decade ago and made the Edinburgh club a principal player in the title race.

Now 57, the hair is thinner and greyer than on that sunny day at Celtic Park in May 1998 when he embraced the Scottish Cup and gave Hearts their first silverware in 36 years, but he remains highly respected among his peers.

Remarkably, Jefferies now has a longer managerial tenure at Kilmarnock than at Tynecastle. Next month, he will celebrate his sixth anniversary in the job at Rugby Park. However, he remains indelibly Hearts: when you have supported a club from childhood, played for it for 14 years and been the manager for a further five, that is what happens. Every time Jefferies returns to Tynecastle, it is a case for turning back the clock.

However, Hearts’ immense problems - after sliding to tenth in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League – have forced Romanov to concede that his constant hiring and firing is not working, nor is the eastern European influence.

The Hearts owner handed Stephen Frail full control of first-team affairs on a temporary basis on Hogmanay. Romanov is searching for a manager with experience of the British game, while Frail – nominally, the assistant head coach but the only man exposed to any public scrutiny – will make his managerial debut at home to Kilmarnock today after months of working under the sporting director, Anatoly Korobochka, and the now-departed Angel Chervenkov.

Jefferies, though, remains an intriguing possibility. Indeed, he has answered to, possibly, an even more demanding taskmaster than Romanov for the last few years – the bank manager. At Kilmarnock, the debts were so severe, Jefferies had to sell his best players, such as Steven Naismith and Kris Boyd, to survive, while cutting the wage bill down to under £1 million.

Jefferies has been linked with the managerial vacancy at his former club, but has refused to discuss whether a return to Hearts would appeal. “Until the day that a club comes into contact with my chairman, it would be wrong to comment,” he said yesterday.

Frail admits he would not be surprised if Jefferies is linked with the position. “Jim did great here, he won the Scottish Cup in 1998,” he said. “He has done well at Kilmarnock on limited resources but I do not know who is in their thoughts. We need to exhaust all candidates and make sure it is the right guy for the job. I am sure the club would pick the right guy.”

Hearts were thrashed 4-1 at Dundee United last Wednesday and if their former manager made it seven defeats in a row, alarm bells would really start ringing around his beloved Tynecastle. However, there is no sense of gloating from the man towards the club that he quit in 2000 to join Bradford City, then in the English Premiership. “Hearts have been struggling of late and they’ll be trying to make amends for that,” he said. “We’ll go there to battle our corner. We’ve got to only think about ourselves. Despite their run of results, Hearts is still one of the toughest places to go. I still regard them as a team capable of challenging the Old Firm.”

Jefferies has his own problems. His team have lost seven of their last ten games. The suspension of centre-back Frazer Wright after his red card in the 1-0 defeat against Falkirk is compounded by the huge injury problems.

Frail says his task is to ignore Romanov’s search for a permanent – if such a thing exists after seven head coaches since 2005 – manager. “The focus now is the next few weeks and trying to get results because it has been a bad, bad slide. It’s important we stop it and get a few wins. If I am here until the end of the season doing it then I will be delighted."



Taken from timesonline.co.uk


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