Irn Bru and an AlkaSeltzer please

Hangover cures were posted missing at Tynecastle today, that was the verdict.
Hearts suffered that infamous post champions league hangover at Tynecastle today?

How much of that do i believe, i believe it about 20%.
I left Tynecastle with a feeling today that i have not felt for a good while now and never once during last season - association with mediocrity.
Hearts were myriad things last season but mediocre, never once were we mediocre.

I finally got my season ticket sorted out with my fifth visit to Tynecastle ticket office, i waited 45 minutes in the queue this time on Friday lunchtime. The guy who runs the Hearts shop, i hope they are paying him triple just now because he is doubling as crowd control for all us ? - just how do the board of Heart of Midlothian Football club view us ? If you go by how they treat us, you would not come up with many complimentary tags for us punters
The guy that runs the shop and controls us punters in the queue is walking along the line maybe six of us at a time and he is letting us know that for sure we will definitely get our season ticket book today and categorically "all season ticket books were posted out by close of play last night ( Thursday )" as he is saying this to the crowd there are punters coming out of the ticket office with their season ticket book inside the stamped addressed envelope that was categorically posted by close of play last night. They just plain lied to us, as well as made a complete arse of distributing our tickets on time and caused loads of us to give up our valuable time to spend it standing in lines for hours on end - they just plain lied to us and they continued to lie until we finally all went home. They are a disgrace !!
The final insult on top of the injury was a phone call from the ticket office at Tynecastle to my house on Friday afternoon ( 2 hours after i had picked up the ticket book ) "Your season ticket book is now ready for collection at the ticket office, we are open until 6 this evening"

Rant over !

I was upbeat about the game today, like i said in the last post i thought we had let ourselves down and the gulf was not so big blah blah. I expected us to redeem ourselves with a good solid performance against a typically mid table Scottish Premier League outfit. As it proved today the gulf is not so big - evident in that Falkirk could do to us what Athens done to us a few days earlier. That is to completely overwhelm our midfield for large sections of the game, yes Falkirk too were a man over everytime they got into our third - i still don't know how that works?

Falkirk fans initially took great delight in singing "Champions League, your having a laugh", Hearts support responded with "SPL your having a laugh" this flew back and forward in an otherwise atmosphereless afternoon - but there was an unexpected air about this, it was almost like the Falkirk support ( who started that chant a few months back ) really thought - we told you so six months ago and now they just felt a bit guilty about sticking it to us again in our obvious state of dissappointment after Wednesday.
To our retort there was nothing behind it for a number of reasons - one of them being that - it is a bit rich slagging a team off for not being good enough for this league when they are playing you off the park at the time.
Hearts support were emotionally drained today? I certainly was, i was only prepared for a standard 2 or 3 nil, but i forgot that this is not last season.

The first half was a shocker from a Hearts perspective, the game tho was actually quite good to watch i think if you were a neutral. Mostly this is down an accomplished display by Falkirk summed up by Russell Latapy, my half time question was "how is it that a 75 year old can look like the fittest guy on the park" ok he is 37 or something but come on he plays centre midfield. I am getting my head round things and am starting to see the problems it is just that the answers aren't very good - it is starting to look like the answers are - Paul Hartley and Rudi Skacel, only one is a possible answer and that could be a few weeks yet. So for all the massive squad we have, take a player or two out of it and we slip into abject mediocrity. I guess the other point of note there would be that - for all Hearts claims to some kind of superiority, the only guy on the park today that was in any squad at this summer's world cup was Mr Latapy.
There were chances for both teams in the first half but nothing really stands out for me, Falkirk had a fantastic opportunity with their striker unmarked in the box with the ball at his feet, he snatched at it and Gordon took it easy. There was an incident with one of the Falkirk defenders and Roman Bednar, just off the ball i noticed a bit of a square up, and 2 seconds later a flailing arm and Bednar is on the floor. For all the world with my view that is a sending off. It ended up a booking and loads of Falkirk fans on various phone ins claiming that Bednar set this up in an attempt to get their man sent off. It is never straight forward but i wouldn't put it past Bednar. When Hearts did manage to get forward we just lacked quality, thats the difference, this time last year we were razor sharp with devastating quality in the final ball, that is just not there just now and that has nothing to do with a big game we happened to be part of mid week.
Half time and i was still comfortable, i fully expected the second half to be better from our perspective, i expected my already anticipated substitutes, Jankauskas on for the innefectual Pospisil and this time at least, Beslija on for McCann ( for god sake put this hasbeen out of his/our misery and out to pasture). Cesnauskis is still unwell so Beslija was the obvious choice and i was happy with it thinking why not just get him out there and see what we haven't yet paid for.
Jankauskas came on and i was happy but Beslija came on for Brellier - i just haven't the foggiest idea what that is about. We are already totally overrun in midfield, they are playing 5 against our 4 and we take off the only midfielder we have who can tackle ? Was this some kind of attack minded chase the win attitude ( McCann was moved into the centre ).
Bemused !
As the game wore on it became more evident that Falkirk were delighted with a draw, if they had gone for the win it was there for the taking. Hearts just got desperate and lost any shape we did have going forward, Beslija when he did get the ball failed to take anyone on and always opted for the early cross - lacking confidence i guess but at least his crosses were making it into the box.
The last 10 minutes were pretty frantic with a fair amount of pressure from Hearts it was just never going to be our day tho, summed up by good fighting by Bednar to get to a loose ball on the edge of the box, under pressure and a very difficult chance he managed to get his foot round it to clip the ball over the outrushing keeper only to see it also sail a foot or so over the bar.
In retort to Bednar's play acting attempts to get players sent off, the Falkirk keeper was out of order in many ways in that second half, much time wasting and play acting.

Last thought on this one is, if things don't improve and quickly then Ivanauskas is going to find his coat on a very shoogly peg, you just know it.