HOOOO ON THE JAMBOS

Ok lots to get through today.
The lack of match reports over the past few weeks has been down in part to some technical difficulties with my PC ( now sorted ). I must concede tho that the lack of match reports over the past few weeks has in part also been down to a depressing lack of any desire to write anything about Hearts. Right now I am pumped to the eye sockets with it all - Hibs tomorrow in the Semi-Final of the Scottish cup, so any recap of the last few weeks of madness and mayhem at Tynecastle will be flavoured by that fact. I will try to maintain some semblance of balance?

The technical difficulties, if you are in the least interested - this may come in useful. I tried to set up a VPN link from my machine in the house to my company network using their VPN software. This didn't work and only served to screw the network settings on my machine. At one point I managed to get the machine into a 2 minute reboot cycle. I just managed to get logged in and start the uninstaller for the VPN software before the machine rebooted itself. I think tho that maybe the uninstall wasn't the cleanest and it left my machines settings mixed up. Try as I might I couldn't get a newtork connection. Lots of messing around but to no avail. I was just about to use the sledge hammer approach and use the recovery disk I got with the PC taking it back to the state it was in when it left the shop, when I discovered something - XP has a thing called 'system restore' you can access it from Accessories -> system tools -> system restore. This looks like an incremental back up of your registry and other geeky bits n bobs. Anyroads I just took the machine back to the state it was in before the VPN software was installed and hey presto, the internet is back. This all took about 2 weeks of farting about tho so no match reports during that time, I will try to re-cap now.

There have been three games a manager and a DOF since the last report -

Inverness Caledonian Thistle 0 Hearts 0
An absolute dog of a game this one, winters last stand up in the bitter north, it was a howling gale and next to no football was getting played. The draw meant that Hearts dropped to 15 points behind Celtic and even the most mentalist of Jambo dreamers gave up any hope of catching Celtic this season. It's pretty obvious really but each of these away draws have been an individual nail in the coffin of our challenge, far too many of them for a team chasing a european place never mind a league title. I listened to this game on the radio - it really was depressing stuff maybe Hearts done some decent work in the first half but in the second we were non existant and were lucky to come away with anything at all. The fact that we did I guess is testament to our determination to cling to whatever we do have. There was a fair amount of punditry on Hearts side after this one tho, ICT are no pushovers for sure and it really was a howling gale so no football was possible but I just can't get past the fact that if it had been Celtic and probably lately Rangers up there in the same conditions they would somehow have conspired to squeeze all three points out of the fixture - who knows. ICT last week however went to Easter Road and gubbed them 2 - 0, excellent!

Hearts 1 Rangers 1
Loads of pressure on both clubs on the run up to this game, a real six pointer. Rangers come in to the game 6 points behind Hearts and knew that if they managed a win and reduced the defecit to 3 then the pressure would really be on the Jambo's and I think they would really smell blood and would ultimately reign us in during the split. Hearts on the other hand knew that if they could win they would almost certainly kill off the late Rangers challenge for 2nd place and more importantly a shot at the Champions League next year.
So I guess it was fated to be a draw.
Packed and noisy Tynecastle as you would expect for what at the time was the biggest game of the season for certainly Hearts.
Ferocious start by both teams going either way, it was obvious from the off that at least Rangers came to Tynecastle as a football team unlike the abberration that turned up the last time. It was 100 hundred miles an hour and hard to tell who if anyone was going to make an impression on the game. Out of nothing tho Cesnauskis, wide on the right about level with the half way line, done some excellent work to first bring the ball under control then to flip over the heads of two Rangers players to create the space for himself to scamper down the wing. A quick low cross and Jankauskis was there at the front post to hammer home 1 - 0 to the good guys. The rest of the first half was much the same although I can't really remember Gordon having much to do at all it was nonetheless nip and tuck. Skacel had a great effort svaed by the Rangers keeper - I think if that one had gone in it would have been much better for Hearts and Rudi Skacel. The once hailed hero of the Tynecastle revolution Rudi Skacel is looking decidedly below par these days and the still prolific "were not worthy" actions from the crowd look less deserved with every week. He has also been coming in for heavy criticism for diving, feigning injury blah blah. Some of that is deserved. Rudi tho he just needs a goal or two and he would be right back up there - oh for a Skacel hat-trick tomorrow in the Semi Final.
The second half was a bit more one sided in favour of Rangers and Hearts now well known lack of ability to play for 90 minutes was there for all to see. Rangers scored a very similar goal to the Hearts one the ony difference being the cross found it's way to the back post before being hammered home.
Given the predicament of both clubs and what I have seen of Hearts frailties in the latter part of games that they haven't killed off, I think Rangers were guilty of not going for the win, they could have taken it I think if they had thrown a bit of caution to the wind and went for the throat. Hopefully that lack of endeavour will allow Hearts to remain in 2nd at the end of the season.
Rangers did however have one chance to steal it with about 15 minutes left. A cross into the Hearts box was poorly cleared and it fell to Buffel ( I think ) he hemmered a shot towards the right roof of Gordon's net. Craig Gordon ( Scotland, Scotland's number 1 ) pulled off save of the season to keep it out.
Gordon just re-signed for Hearts this week, he is the one guy tho that I think we should just not stand in his way, he is destined for bigger and better things and could in the years to come amount to the best Scottish keeper, ever really.

Graham Rix and Jim Duffy
The only thing I can say about this is Vlad's timing stinks.
Surely to maximise the damage done he should have waited until the morning of the semi final to sack his management team for the 2nd time this season. Thought maybe he could have asked Rix to get some mints from the garage in Harthill on the way to the semi and then drove the team bus away whilst he was in there, Graham would have got the message.
I was never in favour of Rix in the first place, I did however warm to him for a few weeks during the winter but in the end he was on a hiding to nothing really. I don't think he will have any regrets at all, he gave it a shot in very difficult circumstances, he did come up a bit short tho.
What annoyed me most was Rix's acceptance of mediocrity, he seemed to take an away draw at Fir Park as OK because the team played alright and Motherwell at home are no mugs and well almost any reason he could think off to make things seem OK. It's not OK and I don't care about giving other teams respect I just want us to beat them.
Official reasons given for his dismissal -
Too many draws, yes exactly far too many draws
Some of the signings in January were not of Hearts standing, for this I can only think of Lee Johnson and that bloke Hackett, since the rest of the signings were Vlad's. I have to say bringing people up from the lower reaches of English football was allways going to be a gamble. Never seen Hackett, Lee johnson looked like a half decent squad player a bit small and light maybe but he could kick a ball. Christ knows what those two must think of things now - I guess they will be heading back down south again in a few weeks anyroads.
Duffy had to go ofcourse, he was part of the Rix team, as I said before he is just a failed Scottish manager so what the hell we were doing trying to present him as some kind director of football, I will never know.
Once again the big names from european football are being bandied about for the Hearts job, good grief. I have a couple of weeks holiday coming up, do you think if I put in my application I can be manager for a bit.
So caretaker manager is Ivanauskis, he is the guy who managed Kaunas to a title a couple of years ago and Vlad sacked him a few games into the next season ( because a one too many draws ) mmmmmm. At the moment I don't think it matters a damn who runs the team or picks the players or whatever, we will limp to the end of the season now and take whatever we can muster for ourselves.

Falkirk 1 Hearts 2
Nasty nasty game, this is the one where Rudi got all his bad press for diving etc.
Most pundits thought the truama of the sacking mid week would knock the good ship Jambo ofcourse enough for Falkirk to de-rail them.
Naw we fought for all three points and deserved it in the end. The run in to the end of the season will be hard going for Hearts - we need to go away to Celtic, Rangers and Hibs, so we will need every one of these ugly wins we can get. Not sure what the Rangers run in is yet.
Rangers play Dundee Utd at Tannadice in the afternoon after the Hearts-Hibs semi-final, so they have a choice to bring it back to just 3 points behind us, we will have a game in hand but that game is at Parkhead when Celtic can win the league if they get all 3 points.

Hibs v Hearts Scottish cup Semi-Final
Really, really wanted a Hearts v Hibs final but it was not to be. Make no mistake tho and no disrespect to Gretna ( who beat Dundee 3 - 0 earlier today ) this is the final.
I had been weirdly comfortable all week, perfectly relaxed about this game, for a number of reasons I just couldn't see where the goals would come from for Hibs, so I felt totally confident in a glorious Hearts victory in what could prove to be the biggest Edinburgh derby in decades.
Until !!
I woke up at 4am on Thursday morning in a cold sweat, I had just witnessed in my dream the odd goal in 5 being slotted into the Hearts net with 2 minutes to go. I can still see the goal now, it's horrible.
Ofcourse this is nonsense, just a dream blah blah.
Don't care !
The effect this has had on me is to turn my guts upside down and inside out - I am a nervous wreck. At the time of writing this there are 17hours and 15 minutes to kick off - I will have to drink a lot to settle down tonight.
Managed to get 5 tickets so it will be a bit of a family day out to Hampden tomorrow on the bus from Tynecastle.

HOOOOO ON THE JAMBO's