Dazed and Confused

Originally sent on 5th December

We're top o' the league and your no !!

Another ditty from the over excitable terraces at tynecastle. At the time of writing this and for a few hours anyroads, Hearts are once again setting the pace at the head of the SPL. Celtic travel to Aberdeen this afternoon to play their game in hand and a victory will take them ahead of Hearts by a point.
After two fairly dismal and just plain not good enough away draws, things have been looking decidedly ropey on this years title challenge. Celtic took the initiative and managed to scrape two points ahead of Hearts then inexplicably lost at home to bottom of the table Dunfermline. The Jambo's however could not capitalise on this by only scraping an ill earned draw away at Motherwell to bring them within a point. This was last week!

A hard earned point away to an Aberdeen side who were well up for a battle against Hearts two weeks ago was Graham Rix's first game in charge - i couldn't really argue with it because Aberdeen were getting stuck right into us coming away with a draw and no major injuries was about as good as we could have expected.
The draw away at Motherwell tho was a different kettle of fish. The English premiership is getting slated at the moment for being boring only one team in it and everyone plays 4-5-1. Rix sends out his charges at Fir park adopting this, less than optimistic formation. Just not good enough for a team supposed to be putting together a challenge. On top of this, our two main strikers are out injured and Rix completely drops the natural replacement ( he is not even on the bench ) Pospicil. He playes young Callum Elliot up front on his own. I have no idea what he was thinking - still in the honeymoon period or he would have been taken to task over that one. We go one down and at least Rix had the forethought to go back to 4-4-2 for the fight back. This is what, if it happens, will kill our challenge, too many away draws! We need to win these matches, we need to win all these matches.
Rix is by all accounts, considered in England to be an excellent coach, real top quality. His managerial pedigree is a bit of - not very good and not yet proven but it is fairly clear that he would have been in a better position in English management if it were not for his shady past ( this is the last time i will mention his shady past ). I am suspicious tho, the 4-5-1 nonsense leads me to be a bit worried about his tactical view of the world. It is early days but i don't think we can afford to fart about here, we can't allow a bad month or six weeks whilst he beds in his view point, whatever he does has to be on the hoof of a winning streak that lasts until May, right.
So on Saturday i witnessed something i have never seen before i am still confused and worried and want an answer. looks like no-one else saw it tho cos no one seems to be making any noises - get this
Hartley plays right centre midfield
Brellier plays left centre midfield
I saw these two swap positions everytime they found themselves on the wrong side of each other ( regardless of what was going on around them ) - Livi could have the ball be chasing through the midfield and Hartley/Brellier would be right there but would stop and swap places rather than make a challenge. The same thing happened if their full backs overlapped their midfield and our midfield tracked them. They could be getting ready to swing a cross over and just when we should be challenging our midfield and full back would swap over rather than make the necessary lunge. Got the impression that Rix was trying to force through some over complex tactics that the players just couldn't work out - maybe we will get there but the only reason livi did not make us pay on Saturday was because no one runs off the ball in that woefull 1st division outfit.
So Thank god for Rudi Skacel, two goals, the first a peach - collects the ball 40 yards out on the left, dances round two and spanks a shot into the opposite top corner of the net from 25 yards out. The second wasn't quite so fabulous but was equally clinical in execution.
I watched Rudi warm up before the game started, he hovered around outside the box and just slammed shot after shot with venom into the net - he broke the net as well during this tirade - i figured he was in the mood and it turned out so - these two goals came in the first 15 minutes. At that point for all the world we were on for 6 or 7, as it turned out that was it for us, plenty of chances to win this one 3 times over. A bit of bad finishing and bad luck it could have been over by half time. Livi scored a good goal on the hour mark and had a bizarre goal chalked off - a throw in on the left bounced around the penalty spot straight over Craig Gordon and into the net - apparently it did not touch anyone on it's trajectory and it needs to??
More chances to kill the game go begging so in the end we kind of hobbled to a 2 - 1 win.
Not too bothered by that more concerned about the weird tactical stuff going on.

Time has passed and Celtic won up in Aberdeen so go back to the top by 1 point, they come to Tynecastle on 1st January - looks like a seminal game at the halfway point to me - before that tho we have Inverness at tynecastle and then away to Ibrox. Ah Rangers, the high point of the season really - they are currently enduring their worst run in the whole of their 132 year history - it is hillarious and they are truly shite. This weekend they gave away a 2 - 0 lead at home to draw 2 - 2 with Falkirk. I just hope to god that their innevitable first step on the long road to recovery is not a gubbing of Hearts in a fortnight. By this Thursday they will have a new manager and 10M to spend on players when the transfer window opens in January.
Most talk in Hearts land about this transfer window is can we keep Rudi Skacel, not really in our hands, he is on loan from Marseille so all we could do is make an offer and hope it is good enough but everyone from Newcastle to Liverpool to Werder Bremmen and a clutch of Italian teams have been over watching him over the past few weeks. So if we manage to keep him i will be surprised and delighted. We will sign a couple of others but you only pull a gem like Skacel once a decade i think.