Jefferies In The Frame For Hearts?

Various sources from Kilmarnock have been very cagey in the media over the past few days when quizzed about the possibility of Jim Jefferies returning to Hearts as manager in the near future.

Jefferies’ long-time assistant Billy Brown was asked pretty directly by Talk107 about a possible Tynecastle return and his response was garbled to say the least, and in the end he blurted out something along the lines of ‘you never know what might happen’, which tends to be a default answer for when you’re desperately trying not to let anything slip.

Former Hearts captain Gary locke has also been making similar noises in the papers this week, admitting that he ‘fears’ Kilmarnock losing Jefferies (and possibly Brown)to Tynecastle is a genuine possibility. Given Gary’s allegiances though, I’m not quite sure that ‘fear’ is the word he would genuinely choose to use here, but we’ll let him off considering that Kilmarnock pay his wages!


As I’ve said a few times this week, Jefferies would certainly not be my first choice to take the reins at Hearts, but if the appointment was purely to try and stabilise the club for the next couple of years, it probably wouldn’t be the worst move in the world.

But if the move was to be seen as ‘the answer’ i.e. Jefferies is the Messiah who can bring the title back to Gorgie, etc, then I’d be very sceptical. As one poster indicated this week on an article comment, giving JJ money would be very risky indeed if you look at what he’s done with larger sums in his managerial career (remember where the majority of the SMG money went), and generally when you bring back a previously successful player or manager it’s always viewed as a step back of sorts.

Still, sometimes you do need to step back to go forward and this is perhaps what Hearts will need to do to get out of the ever-deepening hole that they find themselves in right now.