All over bar the shouting

OK i have struggled to bring myself to put any words down about Hearts, but here goes.
Two games have come and gone since the last update. The details are completely unimportant, it's all just arithmetic in the end.
We got 3 out of 6 and Celtic got 6 out of 6 and we are now 10 points adrift and closer to Rangers and Hibs than we are to the league leaders.

So all thoughts of a glorious league campaign are tucked away in the drawer for another decade or so.
We still have the cup, yes the cup is still there for the taking, and we still have a very creditable 2nd place to be fought for, and it will be a fight there is little doubt about that. I just can't get excited about coming 2nd tho, i have been there before.

The buggers got us dreaming again, after the fantastic demolition of Falkirk on boxing day and the desperate fortune of 'that game against Celtic' (the more i think about that one the more lucky Celtic were to get out of Tynecastle with anything at all never mind all the points).
We had a hard fought victory against Kilmarnock in the cup at Tynecastle a week later then the first of the two games i mentioned earlier - away to Dunfermline.
A shaky first 30 minutes with Hearts huffing and puffing but not really getting very far, the game finished with Hearts running away four-one winners. There were claims of 'Hearts are back on top form once again' and 'this league ain't over yet', couple this with lots of movement in the transfer market and we were once again beginning to believe that we could make up this deficit. After all we still have Celtic to play twice and both Rangers and Hibs are there to take points off them.
The transfer market has been too active and is still too volatile to go into in depth, it will all settle down at the end of January and we will see where we are then. The last 15 minutes of the Dunfermline game, game over was marked by all 3 Hearts substitutes being new names.
There was a moment of brilliance reported by Radio Scotland pundits as 'nearly the goal of the century', Rudi Skacel was 30 yards out on the left touchline when he spotted the keeper just off his line, he curled a shot with the outside of his left boot over the keeper and destined for the top corner. The ball came off the junction of post and bar. Sounds like it would have been a cracker and just like the kind of goal i score in Pro-evo soccer everyday. We were show boating in the end and i spent the whole week on the up thinking "OK we lost to Celtic but it was a very close call and since Ibrox we have been playing as good if not better than at any time this season".
Then we go to Rugby park.
Arse!
Meantime and i am not so sure about this - Neil McCann re-signs for Hearts, OK he's a legend from 98 in any case and he's/was a solid international, proven decent quality, but you know he's in his (early) thirties so i am not so sure it is such a great move. He plays on the left in almost exactly the Skacel role so is this Hearts accepting that Skacel is not ours to keep and he has sold himself far too well in this shop window and Marseille will sell him onto bigger and better things - who knows. I suppose the timing couldn't have been better McCann is straight in the team against Kilmarnock for the now suspended Rudi Skacel ( vast majority if not all his bookings have been for 'appearing too happy after scoring a goal', this is a new rule over here these days, it is almost impossible to score and then have a laugh without getting booked)
The fates conspire once again as it appears that McCann is the only Hearts player who looks like he might do something against Kilmarnock until he gets his knee ligaments ripped out after 20 odd minutes - he's out for 2 months. Hearts never recovered and without Pressley ( also suspended ) there was an air of innevitability in the defeat we took.
Had McCann not taken that injury i guess things might have worked out - i have whinged a bit lately that for all Skacel's greatness you never really get more than a half out of him. I seem to remember McCann being just the same so maybe playing them a half each would have worked really well.

Comedy moment of the week.
For a long time now, Celtic supporters (mostly) have referred to Ibrox as "Castle Greyskull", this is after an eighties cartoon series called He-Man or something like that.
Rangers in response call Parkhead 'The Piggery', not wishing to take sides but that just has no class at all.
So lying in bed saturday morning watching BBC News24, the weather report is being delivered by a wee scots lass, she is relating the weather to all the major sporting events of the day, at this point she is in Scotland. She goes through each of the big games given her thoughts on what the weather will be like for the game, finally she gets to the last venue and says, dead pan with quality execution - "It will be dry and sunny but cold, around seven degrees, so rap up warm if you are travelling to Castle Greyskull this afternoon for the Rangers v Livingston match". She is apparently a Kilmarnock fan upset at Rangers stealing their striker, not that they needed him against us.

So Hibs at the weekend, never have a clue which Hibs team will turn up, we will not be on full cylinders so this one could be a real struggle. Hopefully i will have a bit more of a grin on my face for the next installment.