Tynecastle coffers bare for fight against the drop.

Jefferies must rely on patience and hard work

KEN GALLACHER, CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER

31 Oct 1995

HEARTS' manager Jim Jefferies may be sitting at the bottom of the premier division this morning, but you won't get him to say that he regrets the decision he made to take the troubled Tynecastle job at the start of the season.

It doesn't matter to him that the club has become something of a managerial graveyard over recent seasons.

His major concern remains trying to get the Edinburgh side he supported so long as a kid and served so long as a player back in shape.

He recognises now that this will take him longer than he first anticipated when he walked out on Falkirk to take on the task in the summer.

But he refuses to entertain any suggestions that he allowed his heart to rule his head when he made up his mind after days of indecision.

"Look,"he said yesterday, "I'm not daft.

I have been in the game a long time and I knew what I was going into.

I had spoken to other people in football about the situation at Hearts, including Mo Johnston, who had been with the club before I took him to Falkirk.

"He confirmed most of what I had heard and what I had been thinking myself and, to be honest, now that I have been here for several months, Mo was right on the button with his advice."

Jefferies believes that the Coca-Cola Cup quarter final defeat from Dundee was the major setback he and his players have had to suffer this season.

Not only because of the manner of their loss -- it came after a penalty shoot-out -- but because it reopened old wounds.

Says Jefferies: "We might have been sitting in the same position as Aberdeen right now, looking at a major cup final appearance following a battle for survival in the premier division last season.

It was so close and then it was snatched away from the players yet again.

"I think that affected a lot of the lads who have been here for a long spell.

They have been so near so often and then faced disappointment and when it happened again it was almost is if they felt they would never get the opportunity to win a trophy."

The problem for Jefferies, of course, as it is for most other managers in the premier division, is that there is no time to lick your wounds, and little time to indulge in self-pity.

"If you start to feel sorry for yourselves then you are going to end up as losers,"he claims.

"Our major challenge this season is to stay away from relegation.

We are in the kind of league where you are happily in mid-table one week and then down at the bottom the next.

"Last season Dundee United went down while Aberdeen were involved in the play-off against Dunfermline.

Hearts were only safe on the last day and Thistle and Falkirk and Kilmarnock were able to stay up because they battled for each other week in and week out.

In this cut-throat league that has to be done."

He knows that he cannot buy his way out of trouble.

"I don't have a penny," he confesses.

He looks enviously towards Tayside, where another new manager, Billy Kirkwood, has been given the resources to reshape the side which was relegated last season.

Says Jefferies: "Billy has had the money to go out and get the players he wants.

Obviously, he felt there should be a clear-out and he has been able to move on players and bring in his own men and at the weekend we saw that he is going in the right direction.

"That kind of option has not been open to me.

We have to go another road here.

We have to be patient and we have to work hard and we have to look for the good young players we have developing in the right way and for our injured players to get back to action.

"I can honestly say that I do not feel under any more pressure than any other manager in the country.

I do feel frustrated, though and all that does is convince me that I have to work harder on getting my thoughts over to the players here.

When I do that then we will see the results follow."

Ideally, Jefferies would want to see them come over the next three games against Partick Thistle at Tynecastle this weekend; at Fir Park against Motherwell next Tuesday and, finally, at home again to Kilmarnock on Saturday week.

Even two home wins would catapult Jefferies and his men up the table -- but staying in a safe position is always going to be their worry until the revival really begins.

Taken from the Herald