9 Hearts signings that flopped – Do you agree? | OneFootball

Heart of Midlothian are looking for an immediate return to the Scottish Premiership after their relegation last season – and they look to be going the right way about it.

They may have fell short in the Scottish Cup final to Celtic but they’re clear in the league by a distance and you have to imagine they already have one foot back in the top flight.

Summer recruitment will be important if they want to stay there though, with new sporting director Joe Savage tasked with bringing in the quality required.

He will have to do extremely well to sign players as bad as these nine played played for the Jam Tarts though – let’s take a look at some of Hearts’ biggest flops.

A towering defender standing at six feet and seven inches, James made the move to Hearts in 1999 from Falkirk.

He was a threat for his former side from set pieces, scoring nine goals in 48 league games, but he could not replicate that record, nor show any real defensive skill for Hearts.

James played just 14 times in two years at Tynecastle before moving on – playing at the likes of Falkirk once again and Ayr before retiring in 2010.

Bosnian winger Beslija was pretty good for Belgian side Genk in his five years there, eventually moving to Edinburgh in 2006 for a then-club record fee of £850,000.

It was a total failure of a move though – in his two years at the club, Beslija struggled with injuries and his fitness and ended up playing just nine times in the league before his contract was terminated.

Sammon probably wasn’t cut out for the Premier League when he left Scottish side Kilmarnock for Wigan Athletic in 2011, and after four more years bouncing around English clubs he came back north of the border to Hearts in 2016.

A three-year deal for the Irishman proved to be poor business though – he scored just twice in his first half-season at Tynecastle before being loaned out and then would spend the next two seasons out on loan as well – a bust indeed for Hearts.

Barasa isn’t the last Lithuanian on this list – he arrived in 2006 during the Vladimir Romanov era at Tynecastle.

A 2006 signing on loan from FBK Kaunas, his year and a half in Edinburgh was torrid, making just 14 league appearances and was booed by fans for his performance against Rangers in October 2006.

The spell at Hearts was his last as a footballer – Barasa retired to focus on business interests in Russia.

The scorer of a famous Premier League goal for Sheffield United in 2006 against Arsenal, Nade found himself signing for Hearts the following year.

Nade spent three seasons at Tynecastle but for the fee of around £500,000 that he cost, he could never deliver the goals that were expected of him.

His highest league tally was just four and in 2010 he was frozen out of the squad for fighting with teammate Ian Black, before being released at the end of the season.

Having scored goals in Austria, Witteveen arrived in 2009 looking to make an impact, and he did in Hearts’ first home game of the season against Rangers.

That would be his only goal for the club though as he made just 10 league appearances – he departed the club a year after signing and eventually ended up back in Austria.

McCallum has actually proven himself to be a decent goalscorer in the National League, but he was never up to Scottish Premiership standards when he played for Hearts on loan in 2014.

The striker had scored goals in a brief loan spell at League Two side Torquay and Hearts was a massive step up, but he just wasn’t up to it, playing six times and failing to break his duck in his time at Tynecastle.

McCann was highly-rated as a youngster at Airdrieonians, and he became Gary Naysmith’s replacement at Hearts in 2001 after he departed for Everton.

His big boots were unable to be filled with the same quality though, appearing just 39 times in the league over a three-year period as he quickly fell out of favour with manager Craig Levein.

McCann spent time in the lower leagues of England following his Hearts departure and retired in 2015 after a stint at Clydebank.

A second Lithuanian to make the list, Pilibaitus was a January 2007 signing from Kaunas however he took two months to make his debut for the Scottish club.

Pilibaitus made just six appearances in the end and he just wasn’t of the quality required for the club at the time – although he came back to haunt Rangers a year later when knocking them out of the Champions League with Kaunas.