What went so badly wrong for Steven Naismith at Hearts?

There wasn't even a big exodus of players in the summer, often an inevitable downside for Scottish clubs outside of Celtic and Rangers when they've enjoyed a successful campaign. Alex Cochrane was the only first-team player to go who the club would have preferred to keep, as Birmingham City took advantage of his expiring contract to snatch him up for a fee of just over £1 million.

So how did Naismith go from leading a team that had stormed to third place to one which, at the time of his departure, sits bottom of the Scottish Premiership with one point from six games, having missed a glorious chance to reach the Europa League with home-and-away losses to an average-looking Viktoria Plzen side, and out of the League Cup to second-tier Falkirk?

Firstly, there's Lawrence Shankland. Last season he was a goalscoring machine, racking up 24 league goals for the campaign and 31 in total. This campaign he's been a shadow of his former self.

A regression of sorts was expected. Shankland has long been a deadly finisher, but some of his efforts, such as in wins over Aberdeen, St Mirren and Hibs, were special even by his standards. But nobody could have foresaw his form dropping to this extent. He not only hasn't scored – now eight games in all competitions – he has scarcely looked like doing so. As he approaches the final six months of his contract it now must be Hearts who are delighted the player chose not to sign a bumper contract offer midway through last term.

Naismith really needed to either sign or develop a player into becoming a reliable No.2 to Shankland's attacking general, much in the way Josh Ginnelly emerged in the latter half of the 2022/23 season. Alan Forrest had a good run, as did Jorge Grant later in the year, while Kenneth Vargas showed promise at various junctures throughout the campaign. But none of them were able to do so consistently and banking of those kinds of players to pick up the slack has been a costly error in judgement.

Other options were signed in the summer. Yan Dhanda arrived after playing a significant role in Ross County avoiding relegation, Blair Spittal joined following a campaign in which he reached double figures for both goals and assists at Motherwell, while Musa Drammeh arrived from Sevilla's reserve team. Then there's Yutaro Oda, Barrie McKay and Liam Boyce. But while there is now depth to an almost ridiculous extent, it hasn't actually made the starting XI any better. Neither Dhanda nor Spittal look like significant upgrades, if at all, on Grant; Forrest and Vargas have taken a step backward; Drammeh has barely been seen; it was obvious Boyce was wearing out his usefulness last term, and both McKay and Oda have played themselves out of their manager's trust.

Naismith didn't know what to do with all these options as things started going wrong. The head coach was known for rotating last season, but this term he took on the look of a man scrambling around trying to find the right combination to fix the ailing form and struggling to do so. While the decision not to sign a proven striker to backup Shankland bordered on lunacy. 

Naismith often spoke a good game before and after matches, identifying the correct problems with the team and the manner in which they played, but then the next game would come around and those problems wouldn't be fixed. This even went back to last term where, even with the results, supporters were often underwhelmed with the performance. It became a running joke that Hearts would be joyless in the first half, but keep it at 0-0 and win the game in the second period. It was successful at the time but remained at odds with the aggressive, attacking football which Naismith preached upon his hiring. This, coupled with another promise that never transpired, a greater reliance on young players, meant there was often an air of resentment from the stands which meant the manager had nothing to fall back on when things started going wrong.

The final nail was the disintegration of defensive solidity. While Shankland was winning games last season at one end, the defence (led by the excellent Frankie Kent after his arrival from Peterborough) was making sure they didn't lose them at the other. They had the third-best goals-against record in the league and were particularly frugal from set-pieces, losing just one goal from them all campaign. That's certainly not the case this time around. They conceded two apiece in each of the defeats to Motherwell and St Mirren, while Andres Salazar's short backpass in the former and Gerald Taylor's bizarre own goal in the 3-1 loss at Dundee have been indicative of a pattern of individual errors which wasn't there before.

There's certainly a lot of talent within the squad and, even if they may lack in certain areas, they should be performing a lot better than they are at this moment in time. But that's the job of a manager. Not only did Naismith lead the team through this dreadful beginning to the campaign, he didn't look like he knew the answer to their problems. Once Saturday's defeat to St Mirren confirmed that, the board was left with little option than to turn to someone else.