Stern Andrew McKinlay's big Hearts address: Top-six failure, 'ridicule', new signing tease and budget plans

A stony-faced McKinlay also revealed in his quarterly update to fans via HeartsTV that the Jambos are closing in on another new signing and that the budget for the 2025/26 campaign will not be affected by playing bottom-six football for the remainder of the season. The CEO also hopes to give an update “in the next couple of months” on fresh finances coming into the club via a partnership with Jamestown Analytics.

In a 12-minutes address, McKinlay refused to “sugarcoat” Hearts dropping into the bottom six after failing to win their last two matches of the regular campaign to guarantee being on the right side of the split and took responsibility for the poor performances, admitting that some may “ridicule” him for being confident that Hearts would recover from a poor start to the season to finish at least sixth.

On the league form, McKinlay said: “I’m absolutely gutted by it. There's no way to sugarcoat it. I think it's really important that I apologise to the fans. It's well below their expectations and it's well below our expectations as a club to be in the bottom six.

“As we all know, we had a dreadful start to the season. But we all believed that we'd picked up and we all believed that it looked like we were going to make it into the top six. Then we could look at Europe after that. I think I was ridiculed by some for saying I was confident that we wouldn't make the top six. They can ridicule me now if they feel that that's appropriate, but I was confident.

“Two games out, we had it clearly in our hands. I think anyone, a week ago Saturday, after the results for St Mirren and Motherwell that weekend, I think we were all really confident that we would make the top six. I don't think you could find many people that weren't, but we didn't.

“So there's no point in hiding behind that. As chief executive, I take my share of the responsibility for that. We have to knuckle down now and make sure that we don't have a repeat of that in the future.”

One reason for Hearts’ failure

Hearts changed managers after a dreadful start to the season, with Neil Critchley replacing Steven Naismith as head coach in October. McKinlay pointed to the frustration at the team not being clinical enough in front of goal as one of the chief reasons for not getting the top-six job done.

McKinlay continued: “I think one of the big things is there's been a real frustration, I think Neil's used that term, around our inability to take our chances. What I would say is that since the turn of the year, defensively, we've generally looked okay.

“We've got a new centre-back partnership that's come out and I think hit the ground running. But further forward, we just don't seem to have what we had earlier in the season. We're not creating as many chances, and where we have created chances, we've just not been taking those chances.

“You look at a number of games, going back to the Rangers game, we should have won that game. Dundee United, before the sending off, we had several chances we could have beaten 3-0 up, but there's ifs and buts and we can't dwell on that. We need to take those chances and a score has fine margins, but we shouldn't find ourselves on the wrong end of fine margins.

“It was the same in Europe, we shouldn't have found ourselves in a situation where it went right down to those last five minutes. And in the weekend, we shouldn't have found ourselves in a situation where it went right down to those last five minutes. As I say again, we need to get a mentality into the team as well, that they can get themselves up for these big games.”

Hearts’ Scottish Cup chance

Hearts face Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden on Saturday and McKinlay is well aware of what that match could do for the club.

“Obviously, we've got no bigger game than one coming up in the weekend,” he said, “so that's a huge opportunity for the team to prove their doubters wrong. I sincerely hope that they can do that.

“I think the semi-final is huge. It gives us an opportunity to thank the fans. The fans have come out in huge numbers. We're well over 20,000. We will have the majority of the fans on Saturday. Again, just thank you to the fans. Testament to them that during what's been a difficult time they've still stood up to it and will be there in their numbers. I know they will get behind the team and that's what the team need.

“They need the support. I know it will be difficult for the fans and they'll feel angry at some of them and annoyed at where we are, but let's give the team our backing on Saturday. That could then at least take us to a Scottish Cup final where we would have an opportunity to actually finish the season in style.

“The last five games, from a league perspective, the business is not done yet. We have to make sure that we don't allow ourselves to get dragged back into anything down below us. We've got an opportunity to hopefully put things to bed fairly quickly after the split.

“I think we have to make sure we finish seventh. That's the best we can do now. We should always be aiming for the best we can do. Let's give it our best until the end of the season and see if we can go on a decent run and finish the season with a bit of positivity.

Hearts’ 2025/26 budget

On budget plans for next season, and whether sporting results would affect that, McKinlay said: “I'm comfortable. We've already made our plans for the summer and what happened in the weekend shouldn't change that at all.

“We have plans in place around monies and making sure we've got appropriate monies to do what we want to do and to do what we need to do, to fully utilise the tools that we have available to us to bring in players that will take us to where we believe we should be as a club.

“We don't have a God-given right to that, but we need to make sure we do everything we can so we don't have a repeat of this season from a league perspective.

Potential new Hearts signing

On recruitment, McKinlay expressed satisfaction on the contributions of January signings Jamie McCart, Michael Steinwender, Harry Milne, Sander Kartum and Elton Kabangu. He also expects more Jamestown Analytics players to follow, with Valerenga skipper Christian Borchgrevink already signed up and other to follow soon.

“I think I should probably go back to January,” said McKinlay. “First, we brought in five Jamestown players in January. While some of them have had difficult games and good games, I think probably most people would look at those five. With one exception [Milne], who hasn't really had an opportunity, but certainly the other four have had opportunities.

“I would certainly say that they have improved the team and are good players. I think it hopefully shows fans the sort of players that we can bring in through the Jamestown model. Christian is someone that we are very excited about.

“He is captain of his club at the moment and that speaks volumes. I think it is probably fitting to say that we need more leaders in the team. We need people that will speak up and will make sure that we get the best out of the rest of the team.

“I think Christian will bring that. We are very excited about it. I know there has been a bit made recent about how he is currently injured. We are well aware of that. We have done a medical and we know what the injury is. We fully expect him to be ready for a full pre-season and back for us at the beginning of the season.

“We have another one actually which is almost there as well to announce. We have another few irons is in the fire. We are well aware that we do need to make some significant changes. There are obviously people leaving the club at the end of the season. There are some that will come into their contracts and there are others that may end up leaving as well. Part of that will dictate how many we then bring in.

‘Significant change’ at Hearts

“I expect some significant change. I think the other thing we should always remember and we want to make sure this remains the case is that we want a certain proportion of our team every year to have academy graduates. This year has been very successful in that as we all know with James [Wilson] and Adam [Forrester].

“I am absolutely delighted that we have been able to announce now that they have signed new contracts which again is testament to both of them. They have worked hard for those and they deserve them. It is a testament to the fact that this is very much our model now.

“It is giving these guys opportunities and it is something that we will continue to work hard to do going forward. I am comfortable with where we are going into the closed season. We will be able to hit the ground running next season and have a better season.”

On the prospect of fresh investment from a tie-up with Brighton owner Tony Bloom, McKinlay added: “Apologies to everyone if they feel I’m not saying anything new, but I’m hopeful we will have something more concrete to say in the next couple of months. Positive signs but there is not much more I can say.”