In wur beds

One of my favourite ditty's from the Hearts support over the last few months, i first heard in Diggers on the night after the cup final - to the tune of 'and now you gonna belive us'
has the wonderfully simplistic lyrics....

The Hearts are having a party,
The Hearts are having a party,
The Hearts are having a pa-arty.....
The ........ Hibs are in their beds

Trouble is, big bad boys keep crashing our party, and they are much bigger and harder than us and they are definitely better at parties than we are. In the end we are just huddled in the corner hoping it will all end soon.

An absolutely stinking night in Edinburgh, the traffic was mental and i was running out of time to park the car and get down to Murrayfield in time for the kick off. I parked further out thinking the usual spot on Hutchison Rd would be full. Within 100 yards i was soaked to the skin ( that made the third time that day, having cycled into work in the downpour and cycled home in it as well ) just as well it wasn't January.
I have had it with all that fireworks nonsense, it only makes sense if you annihilate the opposition, otherwise we just look like we are turning our beautiful game into WWF. This time the fireworks were big and noisy and they left the pitch covered in thick smoke for a good 5 minutes, holding up the kick off in the process.
Pity the cloud didn't stick around for another 90, might have been less painful.

I would be tempted to say we let ourselves down badly, just like i did after the Athen's game at Murrayfield, but that would be a lie.
We were just as impotent against Falkirk and St Mirren as we were against a decent, strong and athletic Sparta side ( note// not a fantastic football side, they were pretty useful tho, i guess they would have given Athens a game ).
So we didn't let ourselves down at all, we played exactly as we normally play - pretty crap.
We want to get over ourselves and get back to what counts, we are not better than most of the rest of the SPL and we certainly are not good enough to compete in Europe, so we need to stop thinking that we are. The supporters stopped believing a while back and it is about time the players done the same, until they do we will continue to flap about in no mans land.

Not sure what to say about the game, Sparta dealt with the early conditions much better than we did - initially the pitch was water logged, the ball kept sticking and players kept falling over. Sparta seemed to anticipate this much better than Hearts did tho.
They scored a good goal mid way through the first half, about as much as they deserved as Hearts struggled to make any inroads into the game.
Besliga was playing and probably was one of our better performers without really putting their defence under pressure.
Hearts looked a bit better in the second half, i thought that the drying out pitch helped us a bit there. Just as we were beginning to impose ourselves on the game ( not really looking dangerous but at least in control ) Ivanauskas makes 2 changes at the same time -
Tall on for Panilla - absolute madness
Chesny on for Besliga - i guess that makes a bit of sense.
But the timing stunk, the fact that it was 2 subs at once completely disrupted the teams shape and coherence and we lost all momentum and control we did have.
Graig Gordon pulled of an absolutely amazing series of three saves in quick succession, he got a 2 minute standing ovation for that - just enough time for him to fail to get down to Sparta's second goal, a low struck 25 yard drive. Gordon's possition suspect? doesn't matter really the saves prior to that were nothing short of miraculous.

We were a beaten team from that point, continued to huff and puff but the game was lost and we knew it.

Two last thoughts ..

It is time to put the test tubes away, turn off the bunsen burner and lock the door to the laboratory - the Murrayfield experiment is over, please - i am absolutely convinced we would have made a better shot at things if we had taken these teams to our home ground. With 20-20 hindsight if playing at Tynecastle would have given us a better shot at actually getting into one of these competitions surely we should go for it. I am not even sure if the maths adds up we seem to have to reduce ticket prices to entice as many punters along to Murrayfield as possible, when every seat in Tynecastle could go for £25/£12 instead of a pile for £12/£6

Finally
I wonder who Vlad will blame now?