The McInnes appointment guarantees that Hearts won’t threaten Celtic any time soon.

Why is it that a lot of smart people do dumb things?

There’s a great story about Mark Twain that may well be apocryphal. But I like it anyway. Whether it’s true or not, the story goes that he’s at a dinner party one night, and there’s a guy there—some arrogant clown—waxing lyrical about his knowledge of words.

“Do you know,” he asked the table, “that the word sugar is the only word in the English language spelled S-U but pronounced S-H?”

To which Mark Twain is said to have asked, “Are you sure?”

I thought of that yesterday when I heard that Hearts have approached Derek McInnes and, after reaching an agreement with Kilmarnock, will hire him at the end of the season to become their manager for the next campaign.

And I cannot believe that smart people, who have boasted about how they intend to revolutionise Hearts with data-driven models and analytics-based signings and everything else, have entrusted that system—and all the money they’re spending—to this particular manager.

What I really want to ask them is: Are you sure?

To me, the appointment of McInnes is “safe.” And maybe safe is what the people want. But I don’t think they’ve spent all that money and all that time becoming experts in raw numbers and data to basically settle for a feather-bed, third-place position and lowercase ambition in the dugout. So—who made this decision?

Look, I want to see Hearts be a better team. McInnes will make them a better team. There’s no doubt about that. But he will not make them a contender. He will not create a team capable of challenging for second place.

Because he’s worked at well-resourced teams before. He worked at Aberdeen and once the Ibrox club was promoted they quickly fell into the old routine of settling for third, until eventually he couldn’t even manage do that.

I didn’t think these were the kind of people who would be content to settle.

Crickley came in and didn’t do a great job—that’s why he got sacked. But that, at least, was an appointment in line with the broad strategy the club was apparently going to pursue. I don’t see where McInnes fits into that strategy at all.

It’s a case of SPFL musical chairs. It seems to me that there’s a small group of managers in this league who just rotate between clubs without actually accomplishing very much at any of them.

On the podcast the other night, we talked about this.

The episode was called Third Prize Is You’re Fired—a reference to Alec Baldwin’s stunning turn in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, where he plays a hugely successful salesman brought in to give a pep talk to the sad sacks at a rival firm. And he scorches them all with a flamethrower speech, the upshot of which is that at the end of the month, the bottom two names on the sales board are gone.

And I suggested maybe this is the approach that Aberdeen, Hibs and Hearts should take going into a new season. Third place is no longer enough to save your job. In fact, third place is “you’re fired.”

Will it work? Who knows.

But I do know that the Ibrox club has dropped points in 15 of their 37 games this season, and so it should not be impossible for a side to successfully challenge them for second place if that’s the kind of form you’re going to see from them.

When the team in second place drops points in fully one-third of its matches, then you should get sacked for finishing third, in my opinion.

It shouldn’t be a badge of honour. It should be regarded as a minor disaster. And until the thinking at clubs changes—radically changes—we’re not going to see any kind of improvement in the other teams in this league.

They have to stop settling for. Third place can no longer be seen as an accomplishment. It should be a sacking offence instead.

And yeah, I don’t know if it’ll work—but I do know the current system doesn’t. The current system, where teams start the season targeting third place, is ridiculous. It’s defeatist. It’s unworthy of any side that aspires to be successful.

Because that’s not success—no matter what some in the media and at some of the clubs might think.

So the question has to be asked at Hearts: Is Derek McInnes being brought in to get that second place? Or is he being brought in under the assumption that third place is enough?

Is Tony Bloom actually running this process? Does he have a say in this appointment? Or is this another Ann Budge bright idea? And we all know how good those have been. She is the epitome of someone who thinks she’s a lot smarter than she is. The worst thing that ever happened to her was winning the CEO of the Year award about a decade ago—because that obviously went to her head.

Whoever made the decision has decided to play it safe rather than take a chance on something that might prove radical and new and adventurous, and maybe there’s a sort of merit in that, if you’re happy to be an also-ran.

McInnes will get them in the top six. He’ll probably get them into Europe. They’ll do well in one of the cup competitions. And that will be the extent of their progress. But over the course of his time there, you won’t be able to tell the difference between his Hearts team and the Steven Naismith Hearts team that managed third-place finishes. And ultimately, that’s what’s disappointing about it.

They’ve chosen not to move forward. It’s not quite a step back … it’s just a decision made from a position of safety, with no intention of moving from there.

I’ve said it before—outside of the club from Ibrox, Hearts are the most dysfunctional club in this country. Possibly on this island.

And Hearts could be—and should be—a lot more than they are. But they’re dysfunctional because they can’t seem to find a way forward. They’re a club who do seem to think third place should be the height of their ambition. And they don’t act as if they have any intent other than that. And that’s the problem. For too many clubs in this league, that represents success.

The Tony Bloom revolution, at least, offered some hope that maybe Hearts were aiming higher. And then they go and appoint McInnes, and you realise that they’re as stuck in the mud as they’ve ever been.

It’s not inspiring in any way, shape or form. It simply wastes more of their time, more of their resources—and sucks up more of the energy that should be going into something truly revolutionary.

What a great shame—for them, and for the rest of the game here.