Steven Naismith convinced he could have turned things around at Hearts

Steven Naismith has no issue with Hearts’ decision to sack him in September, but he remains convinced he could have turned things round if given more time.

The 38-year-old was relieved of his duties after a run of eight successive defeats left them bottom of the William Hill Premiership, just months after leading the Edinburgh club to a runaway third-place finish in his first full season as a manager.

Naismith, speaking publicly for the first time since his sacking on The Warm-up, the William Hill SPFL’s weekly preview show, said he was “comfortable” with how things ended despite his disappointment.

“There’s a bit of frustration there because you do believe,” he said. “We worked so hard over the previous year to bring success at the start, which we managed to do, and then the reward of that is European football and you get to develop the squad a bit. I thought we did that.

“You need to get success but then when you do that, you need keep it there because if you don’t, pressure comes and you’re going to lose your job. That’s inevitably how it came about.

“I thought we did a good job but at the cold end of it, pressure and demands are there and if you don’t hit them you’re going to lose your job and that’s what happened, so I’m comfortable with it all.

“I loved every minute of it. I’m just disappointed because I thought we had… Hearts do have a good squad and I think they will come good this season.”

Naismith is convinced things would have improved once his summer signings – some of whom are currently thriving under his successor, Neil Critchley – had adapted to life at Hearts.

“I think nobody complained about the recruitment over the summer,” he said. “You sign players and you think at the start of a season ‘brilliant, we’ve got this option, that option’, but probably the bit you can’t judge is how much time players are going to take to settle, especially when for nearly every player we signed, Hearts is a bigger club than where they came from.

“Our first game against Rangers was excellent. All that was missing was the goal and then from there, you lose a couple of games, some bad decisions from me, individual errors cost us a lot, and before you know it, you’re trying to stem that tide.

“You look at results and you go ‘right, if we can get a result here…’ but if you don’t that builds the pressure. I was probably thinking we’d get to the international break because there was three games (to go) and they were probably games that you’re more likely to look at and go ‘right, we should win’. Ross County at home, the European game (against Dinamo Minsk) and then a big one at Aberdeen.

“But even after the St Mirren game when we got beat 2-1, I’m sitting there really still believing that we can turn this around and I can make this better. And then when you have the phone call the next day, that is what it is.”