Maarten Martens now sits beside a bigger shift at Tynecastle: Derek McInnes has left Hearts after 12 months to become Rangers manager. Hearts have lost the coach who guided them through their best campaign in decades, and they have done so just days after Lawrence Shankland also left for Rangers.
McInnes took over last summer after moving from Kilmarnock, then spent the next 12 months driving Hearts to the edge of a first league title in 66 years. They missed out in the final minutes of the final day, a collapse in timing that now sits alongside the loss of both their head coach and their captain and top scorer.
Rangers move after Danny Rohl
Rangers moved for McInnes after Danny Rohl left for RB Salzburg. That sequence turned a Hearts manager who had only recently settled into place into the next piece of Rangers’ rebuild, and it left Hearts facing another search at the top of the club.
The move also fits the wider recruitment model around Hearts. Craig Levein said, “Jamestown don't just look at players, they look at managers as well, so I'm pretty sure they'll have already started” and added that “Hearts have been elevated by Tony Bloom's arrival” to Scotland. He also described Hearts’ title push as “the closest any non-Old Firm team has come to winning the league in 40 years”.
Shankland leaves with McInnes
Shankland’s exit makes the change sharper. He left Hearts for Rangers after they activated a little-known clause in his contract to sign him for free, and Dave McPherson said the loss of McInnes and the Scotland striker was “a massive blow”.
That combination matters because McInnes was not a short-term placeholder. He had been at Tynecastle for 12 months, and his departure removes the coach who had already worked through a season shaped by pressure at the top of the Scottish Premiership and the expectation that Hearts could sustain that level.
Hearts face another reset
Levein said he was “pretty sure” Hearts would already have started looking for replacements for the 54-year-old, which points to the immediate task in front of the club. The next appointment has to land quickly enough to steady a squad that has already lost key figures and a manager in the space of nine days.
For Hearts, the problem is not just replacing one coach. It is doing it after the club came within minutes of a title and then watched the same core weaken in stages. The question now is whether the next head coach is chosen to continue that path or reshape it again.
