Gary Locke looks for licence to help Hearts

Locke, a former Hearts  defender, is currently working through his UEFA Pro-Licence, and reckons that the coming months will be a huge learning curve for him.

McGlynn and Jankauskas were confirmed as Hearts’ new management duo last week and come to the club with a wealth of experience behind them.

And Locke says that he is hoping to pick up plenty of good habits from them: “You learn every day in life and from my point of view I am learning every day as a coach.

“It’s great working with John, his ideas are great and I think we are all singing from the same hymn sheet.

“Things are looking really positive and we are all looking really positive for the start of the season.”

Jankauskas arrived for his first training session yesterday and Locke reckons that the young strikers at the club will also be looking forward to working with him.

The Lithuanian was on Hearts’ books from 2005-2007 and came to Tynecastle having just won the Champions League with Porto.

While Locke had not met Jankauskas before this week, he does have an idea of the experience that he will bring and added of the new assistant manager: “I just met big Janny for the first time yesterday, although I have played against him a few times when I was at Kilmarnock.

“He will bring a lot of experience, he has played at the top level, so I am sure that the boys, especially the strikers, will learn a lot from him.”

While fitness tests took up the early part of the week, McGlynn was keen to see what his players could do and introduced the ball on just their second day back.

And Locke believes that the squad are already feeling the benefits, adding: “It’s been good, pretty intense. The boys are working hard and they’re looking really fit. The boys have all come back in good shape.

“I have known John for many years. When I was a kid I played for Hutchie Vale at U12s and John was the coach at Lothian United at the time.

“I know that he likes the training to be high tempo and the boys are certainly doing that so hopefully we will be all set for Raith Rovers a week on Saturday.”

The Tynecastle side have taken former Livingston striker Rory Boulding on trial and Locke revealed that the coaching staff are hopeful of bringing in one or two new faces before the start of the new season.

“There are a lot of players at the moment who are looking for clubs so it is a good time of the year to look at them and see how they do in the pre-season friendlies,” he said. “Hopefully if they do well we can look at signing one or two of them.”

Speaking to Hearts TV, he added: “We have a young squad, so hopefully we can bring in a couple of new faces.”