Hearts CEO opens up on 'mistake' Neil Critchley appointment
McInnes was unveiled as thew Jambos boss yesterday, having ended his three and a half year stint at Kilmarnock.
He replaced Critchley, who lasted just 192 days in charge at Tynecastle.
"In October we were looking at different parameters to what we may be looking at this time around, and ultimately, we got it wrong," the club's CEO told Sky Sports.
"I'll admit that we got it wrong. If anyone can stand there and say they've not made mistakes, then I challenge them on that.
"The main thing is you learn from those mistakes. We went for a certain type of manager and Neil [Critchley] was a very good coach, very nice guy, but I'm not sure he quite got the club and got the demands of the club.
"So we decided this time round, let's keep it simple. That's why we're going to go Scottish. That was one of the big reasons behind that.
"The whole piece around getting a manager that would understand this and would know what they were coming into, no surprises. So that's the reason why, this time round, we took a different approach.
"I think he was very unlucky, in some ways I felt sorry for him, in that every fine margin everything went the wrong way for us.
"We could easily be sitting here looking forward to a Scottish Cup final this weekend, looking forward to Europe again, we should have qualified for the top six, but we didn't.
"We had two games where we would have got top six, one of them against Dundee United, which if we'd won that we'd have then been hot on their heels for Europe.
"In the cup semi-final, we all know what happened there, so we could easily be sitting here in a very, very different place, and those are very, very fine margins.
"In some ways you've got to feel sorry for Neil, he's a really nice guy, a really good coach, we just got to the stage where we felt we were concerned, after that Dundee game, that we were going to slip into a relegation situation.
"It's important at this point actually, just to put on record how thankful I am to Liam Fox for stepping in, for winning four games in a row at a time when we really needed it.
"I'm happy to say that in hindsight, I think he just wasn't the right person at the right time. I'm not trying to criticise Neil, Neil would be a great coach somewhere, I genuinely think that.
"We've had a reputation in the past for being patient with coaches, I suspect at the moment, people are now criticising us for being too hasty."
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