Jim Jefferies keeps distance from Hearts

By Alan Pattullo
Published on Tuesday 17 January 2012 04:59

THE tanned complexion is evidence that life is currently good for Jim Jefferies. However, it’s possible to wonder whether there remains a niggle about not just the manner of his exit from Hearts, but also the fact that he is missing out on working with a group of clearly talented players.

He knows that it was his choice to sever all ties with Hearts earlier this season when owner Vladimir Romanov, after sacking Jefferies as manager, offered him the chance to remain at the club in a director of football capacity. Jefferies took 24 hours to decide that this wasn’t what he wanted to do in the circumstances, particularly given the fact that Billy Brown, his long-term assistant, had been summarily dismissed as well.

Yesterday, speaking at a Tesco Bank Challenge event at Longstone Primary School, Jefferies said that he turned down the role because, he felt, it had been offered “for the wrong reasons”.

He remains in a legal dispute with the club so he could not expand on this statement. However, it seems clear that he considers the offer to have been merely a sop after the harsh way he was treated. Jefferies has not been back to Tynecastle since leaving the club. Brown’s appointment as assistant manager at Hibernian has given him a reason to go to Easter Road instead, and it meant he could watch Hearts defeat their rivals there earlier this month. Due to the ongoing legal claim, he does not feel comfortable returning to the ground where he played for so long and spent two different spells as manager.

“I don’t think it’s right to go there till the thing is sorted out,” he said. “The one thing I don’t want to be accused of is taking hospitality in the boardroom and the directors box. I don’t think that’s right. I think he [Romanov] accused one or two others, Gary Mackay in particular. Once it’s all done and dusted, and if the invitation is there to go back, I would be delighted. But right now I don’t think it would be the right thing to do. I have had to rely on Billy, who has given us a couple of invitations. I went to the derby recently, and enjoyed it.”

The director of football role did not appeal to Jefferies for other reasons. He didn’t want to be perceived as looking over the shoulder of the new manager. “Paulo [Sergio] coming in with me in the background would not have been ideal,” he said. “It would have been a strange situation for both him and I where I’m just floating round being director of football, or whatever that job entailed. I thought it would be only right that if somebody’s coming in, whoever it would be, that they didn’t have the previous manager in the background.

“The fact I was offered a job and Billy was gone – I just felt there were too many things at that time to jump right into it. But the main reason was that it was done for the wrong reasons.”

Jefferies may consider himself to be well out of it. At 61, he possibly does not need the hassle of acting as the buffer between an absent, unpredictable owner and a group of, at times, disaffected, agitated players. Not that the line of communication is that straightforward at Tynecastle. This was one of the frustrations for Jefferies during his second spell as manager at the club.

“I can’t speak Russian,” he says. “I am sure Mr Romanov can speak a bit of English when the time is right.

“I dealt with [director] Sergejus Fedotovas and he used to keep me up to date with everything. Any messages which were to be relayed to me was done was through Sergejus. I am sure Paulo would have to do that too, unless he can speak Russian.”

Jefferies might feel disturbed about missing out on the satisfaction which comes from rising to the challenge, as the Hearts players and management have done. He describes footballers as being born to be competitive.

“I think if you ask any football player that, for all their grievances and things they are not happy about, that they just seem to walk over that white line and forget them,” he said. “It’s in their nature.

“There is a good squad of players at Tynecastle at the moment and they are now proving that by going on the pitch and putting [all the problems] behind them.

“You have to give them credit. They are not using the situation to get back at the club. In fact, they are doing the opposite. They are giving the supporters what they want to see by fighting for the cause, trying to win football matches.”

While 14 members of the Hearts first team squad finally ran out of patience with the club and submitted a complaint to the SPL after a third straight month of delayed wages, Ryan Stevenson is the only one to have taken a stronger stand. Stevenson withdrew his services after his pregnant wife endured problems associated with stress at the end of last year. Jefferies’ sympathy lies with the player, who was his first signing after he returned to the club in January 2010.

“I am sure Ryan, like a lot of players, has been taking advice from the union,” he said. “His circumstances are different from others in that he has a wife who was expecting their first child

“He took a decision which was best for him. Paulo has come out and said that he understands it. He [the manager] handled that situation well.

“I think he would like to have Ryan back. He has improved a lot since he came into the club. But that’s his stance. Everyone’s circumstances are different.”

It is easy to forget that the first of the 35 league points accrued to date by Hearts was collected under Jefferies’ stewardship, and was earned courtesy of a fine performance at Ibrox Park on the season’s opening day. Come the first day in August Jefferies was gone. He remains in exile from the game in what is his longest break from football since he started out in management.

“It’s just getting an opportunity,” he says. He knows managers with equally distinguished track records have been out of work for longer than him but hopes someone will be in need of him before long.

He has visited his daughter in Cyprus and he has carried out work that needed to be done on his house in Lauder. He has, he says, so far drawn the line at doing the ironing, though a “director of football-type” position at a club abroad has also not tempted him.

“I’ve had two or three things, people asking me if I’m interested and I’ve said no,” he added. “You get people who maybe phone you up and say would you like me to put you in here and there and you either say no or aye and wait and see what happens. But I’ve never really sat down and phoned anybody. I would never do that.”

Taken from the Scotsman