Has Celtic’s title broken McInnes? The Hearts boss has fallen off the radar.

Hasn’t it been quiet over Tynecastle way lately?

I’m going to talk about Hearts fans a little bit later on, but the silence from over there is interesting to me. It brings me around to a subject I wanted to discuss when the season ended, and that is Derek McInnes.

A lot of fans over there are unhappy that he hasn’t spoken properly since the season ended. We are now a week and a half past that day at Celtic Park, and there has been no real explanation, no apology, no major statement from the manager, apart from the annual awards dinner where he ended his speech with a throwaway rant at VAR.

Hearts fans are increasingly asking: where is McInnes?

I understand why.

Not only did their season unravel in a manner they did not expect, but the Shankland news is genuinely shocking. Hearts fans rightly want to know whether their manager knew the captain could leave at the end of the season, and if so, why there was so much noise around him staying.

If the manager did not know, and if this was not made clear to him, how happy is he about it? How does he feel about Shankland walking out to go to Ibrox?

I can tell you this much, and Hearts fans know it too: if their club had won the title, you would not have got McInnes out of the news for weeks, if not months.

He would have been lapping it up. He would have been doing interviews left, right and centre, to every outlet across Europe. The comparisons with Alex Ferguson would have been ringing in his ears like sweet music, as ludicrous and ridiculous as those comparisons would have been even if he had pulled it off.

So, Hearts fans are right to find his silence concerning.

They are right to find it confounding and irritating.

On Shankland in particular, he ought to have been sought for comment immediately. Either the media hasn’t done its job, which would not surprise us, or he is simply not going to discuss it.

That might be a symptom of anger. It might be a symptom of frustration. It might be a sort of weary resignation that it has happened and there is nothing Hearts can do about it.

But fans want to hear something.

They want an answer of some kind, even if it is only: yes, I knew about it, yes, we were relaxed about it, yes, we understood this might happen, and it was important that we focused on the football.

I’m not sure who would believe that.

But he could have said it anyway.

McInnes is a guy surrounded by questions. There are always questions about McInnes. His personal conduct has not been great at previous clubs, and we all know that, even if the media does not really want to go into too much detail about it.

There have been things that split dressing rooms and caused consternation.

McInnes is also a serial nearly-man. He frequently gets right up to the edge of achieving something and then cannot quite close the deal.

On top of that, he is a bitter and vindictive man. He always has something to say when his team doesn’t win, and it is never about his own failings. He doesn’t have failings, as far as he is concerned.

He has always surrounded himself with people of a serious anti-Celtic disposition. That is notable. He had no problem, for example, welcoming Kyle Lafferty back into the fold at Kilmarnock when there was no obvious football reason for that signing, or for retaining his services after his conviction for sectarian abuse of a Celtic fan.

More than anything else, McInnes just does not seem to fit the Jamestown Analytics profile.

I have always wondered if Tony Bloom sees McInnes as a stopgap measure until he can bring in a manager more in tune with the thinking behind the project. There are some McInnes signings that cannot even come close to being considered Jamestown signings. They are certainly not based on data modelling.

I said a few months ago that if McInnes did not get over the line, defeat would put him in a difficult position. People were going to ask why.

People inside the club. People who matter.

I’m going to talk more about the club later on and the people inside it. I’m also going to talk about the fans later, because they deserve it. But McInnes is the unusual personality at Hearts right now.

Although Tony Bloom would have been over the moon at a league title in his first season before he had fully got his hands on the controls, that would also have made McInnes bulletproof. Bloom would have got a lot of credit for something that was not really down to him, but McInnes would have been untouchable.

I don’t know that it is in Tony Bloom’s interests for Derek McInnes to be bulletproof. I don’t know if that fits their long-term vision.

I think they are in for an interesting summer at Hearts.

The Ibrox boss is going nowhere for now, so one possible avenue for McInnes is closed off. But that does not mean he could not be enticed to Ibrox next season if the wheels come fully off the wagon for Danny Rohl.

The signing of Shankland feels like a final roll of the dice for him. Since none of us can really envision a successful Ibrox side under this guy, it stands to reason that job may be available by the turn of the year. That may be when McInnes and Hearts have a full and frank discussion about what comes next.

Shankland is not the only person who has left Hearts in recent days and weeks. Four other first-team players, including Frankie Kent, have also departed, so there are major holes in the squad. McInnes may want to fill those holes with his own people.

But I very much doubt Jamestown Analytics will simply agree to that. There is head-banging coming between the two parties at some stage.

If this were a Celtic manager who had vanished like a fart in the wind while all this was going on at his club, while so many questions remained unanswered and while a rebuild or restructuring was taking place, I know the media would be asking questions.

I know the hunt would be on. I know they would be doing everything they could to track him down and get him on the record whether he wanted to talk or not.

For some of the hacks, especially the likes of Jackson, who has spent a lifetime promoting McInnes’s cause, it should not be difficult to get him on the phone and get him to answer some questions.

If McInnes is avoiding even those guys, you have to wonder what is actually happening.

It may be a little overly dramatic to imagine that the whole Hearts thing could unravel in a very short time, but the fact is that it could.

With so many players having left, with the captain having walked out for free, the question of whether McInnes is happy with the current situation looms large. It is not difficult to foresee circumstances in which there is some kind of self-detonation over there.

There is one other thing to consider as well.

If this is the right time for Martin O’Neill to go because he scaled a mountain people didn’t think he could scale, turning around Celtic in this particular season, then how does McInnes top the season he has just had?

McInnes has to know that with Shankland gone, with Kent gone, with certain other players heading for the exit door, and with European football added to the equation, there is a very good chance this is as good as it gets. Maybe the best time to go is now. Depart as a hero rather than leave later looking like a fool.

No one will tell me that Jens Berthel Askou had offers from outside Scotland and McInnes does not.

If you are a mid-table English Championship team, you might even be willing to overlook his past record south of the border and wonder whether he has matured enough as a manager to give him another chance.

There may be interest from elsewhere in Europe too, from some upcoming club that wants to bring in someone who can organise a team and lift it above itself.

To outside parties, McInnes may look like that guy.

If you were not just smarting over a defeat and blaming the rest of the world for the fact you did not quite get there, but were also contemplating whether you were even going to stay at your current club beyond this summer, you too might turn off your phone.

You too might run and hide somewhere.

You too might decide it is easier than facing awkward questions you are not remotely ready to answer yet.

But these are the things worth pondering as Hearts fans look for answers from the man they think should be providing them.

Where is he?

Who knows?

On holiday, some say. Taking a well-earned break, perhaps.

Fair enough.

But losing your captain, top scorer and club talisman for free after your side has been shattered on the final day requires some sort of statement. Some reassurance.

He has not given that yet.

Five players have left the club in the last few days. Several key members of the squad are gone. Hearts have signed a defender from England in the interim, and not a single one of the recent statements appears to quote the manager at all.

So, this is not just our imagination.

Hearts fans are not merely fretting over nothing.

There is a disconnect here.

It may be the sign of serious issues behind the scenes.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.