Steven Naismith reveals frank Hearts chat in 2017 that gave him hope future in Gorgie was bright

There's a refreshing sense of perspective about Steven Naismith as he takes time out from a family break in Portugal to talk about last season.

The Hearts boss had already squeezed in an early-morning gym session before breakfast with wife Moya and their two daughters – and he has also fielded a few work calls before resuming his holiday. A new campaign sits on the horizon and the 37-year-old insists he’s never consumed by the ‘what ifs?’ in life. He said: “Football isn’t everything in life, there is always a switch-off point. There’s barely been a day since the season ended that I haven’t had a conversation with a staff member, spoken to a player or watched something Hearts-related online.

“I also know that if the worst happens, and I get sacked, then I still have two amazing kids and an amazing wife who I love spending time with. I still have all of the same mates that I grew up with. These are more important to me and that’s why, when things aren’t going well, I have a clear understanding of the bigger picture. Football can be the wild west, I’ve always known that.”

The wagons were circling around Tynecastle last summer after a Europa Conference League exit and a difficult domestic league start. But Naismith just isn’t the type to hit the panic button as he prefers to back the process, with the Jambos climbing to a third-place league finish while reaching two cup semi-finals.

He said: “As a manager I have a clear picture of how I want things to work and what it should look like on the training pitch or in a game. What I won’t get carried away with is the raw emotion that exists in football.

“We could win a game but have played poorly and the players may have done nothing they were asked to do. But everyone would be buzzing with the win. Then, on the flip side, we could lose a game where we do everything perfectly apart from one mistake or a bit of bad luck that costs you the match.

“So I don’t see football through that lens anymore. The way football is measured is by raw emotion and heated anger or joy – it’s what makes it such an unbelievable sport. But when you are on the inside and making the big decisions, you need to have a clear plan about how and why you are going about trying to be successful.

“That’s why I don’t get dragged into all of that raw emotion. If you take our start to last season, when we won only two from 11 games, or whatever the stat was, I only saw loads of things to be optimistic about. We weren’t creating as many chances as I’d have liked and we’d maybe win a game by the odd goal or draw one. But what I was seeing every day on the training pitch and aspects of the game gave me real confidence.

“That’s why I had genuine belief and inner calmness. It would have been different if the players weren’t buying into what we were doing. If you don’t have that buy-in from the players then you are fighting a losing battle. That’s the biggest lesson I learned as a player.

“Robbie Neilson had lost his job six months earlier but I knew we weren’t a bad club or had a bad squad. It’s just those fine lines in football – everyone in coaching has an understanding of that.”

Lessons learned from a stunning career with Scotland, Rangers and Everton have been leaned on by Naismith as he preaches a message to Hearts based on personal experience. He said: “I told the players what I expected from them in terms of their mentality and willingness to work.

“I also gave the players an understanding of how we would measure things. I remember drawing games as a player and the manager would come in and say it was a brilliant point – but footballers are intelligent and they know it wasn’t.

“What we did last season was break down parts of the game where we didn’t get any rewards or what areas cost us and the players bought into it. The biggest credit from my first season as a manager goes to my experienced players. They ran the dressing room and accepted loads of new players coming in. They also had to accept younger players coming in for last pre-season. It may have been a brilliant opportunity for them but it can also be frustrating for the older guys. I made it clear at the start that we were all young players at one point and to remember how you felt at that moment.”

Naismith will work towards completing his UEFA Pro Licence in the months ahead . And he’s spinning plates before Hearts return for pre-season later this month. He revealed it was his own time as a Jambos player that gave him faith in the club’s ability to play a waiting game.

He said: “Back in 2017 I was on loan at Hearts from Norwich. The club asked me to tell them, after six months, what in my experience was good and not good at the club. They asked me despite not knowing if I was coming back or not as a player. It showed me that the people running things at Tynecastle wanted to progress and get better.

“That gave me confidence at the start of last season when things were difficult and it could have been a case of ‘Get him out the door’. I was convinced that wasn’t going to happen. I told the board nothing was going to happen overnight, we weren’t going to be pulling up trees right away, but it worked out how we’d hoped it would.”