The Big Softy

Lets start with Friday. Friday was a perfectly normal Friday, pretty good as days go i am sure you will agree.
My wife woke me on her way out to work, saying some garbled stuff about an announcement on Forth 1 - "Romanov rhubarb stadium rhubarb blurb blurb February Plans rhubarb 12,000 seats"
This registered ( just ) and off i plodded to work, ( the reason i plodded and didn't cycle as usual is another story, suffice it to say i bought a new bike on Sunday. One day i might tell that tale ).
I think it was around lunchtime when i remembered what my wife had said to me, so i had a quick look around the sites to see if there were any announcements about redevelopment to Tynecastle.
The first one i went to was http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/default.stm the main news being a statement made by Steven Pressley about the untenable situation in the Hearts dressing room. Hearts were in turmoil once again.
I won't go into the details as i am sure all Jambos have taken it in and spat it out by now.
Basically on Friday morning Romanov came in to Riccarton all John Wayne on the Players arses and threatened to sack the lot of them if they did not beat Dunfermline. This was the camel that broke the straws back i think for Pressley. He had to say something and i don't blame him for that. He has been a giant in the Hearts team over the past couple of years, without him it would all have gone to crap long before now. A few loosely connected thoughts :-

Romanov is a megolomaniac ( it answers every question you have about him ).

Managers and Chairmen have threatened footballers with the sack since the beginning of time.

That statement from Pressley read like an abdication of his captaincy.

The reason that Romanov threatening the players with the sack, hits the headlines like a tornado is because .. well people believe it.

I can't think of any other football team in any other situation that would ever have played Pressley after the statement.

The fact that all 3 played is 100% proof of a climb down by Romanov.

I do not think that Romanov meant what he said, it was in his mind a much needed pep talk, he is however a megolomaniac and has therefore no real control or balance in his actions.

A wee story to back up the - it's a cultural thing - argument.
I used to work for a company called Ferranti, became GEC. Anyroads there was for a while back in the early 90's a group of South Korean Air Force officers on site. They were software engineers developing some customisations for their display systems ( Ferranti made avionics Systems amongst other things ). They had been there working for about 6 months when a design review was called by the higher brass in the Korean military. These poor Korean subordinates had to stand up and explain their designs to their superior officers, one of them made a complete arse of it. He got all mixed up and lost the plot and just plain made a fool of himself. Now half an hour later, me and a few other lads were making our way round to the canteen when we spotted this poor guy round the back of the building with his superior. The superior was ........ kicking the living daylights out of this poor guy, giving him a real pasting.
This was apparently, perfectly acceptable retribution for making an arse of your design review, we on the other hand would simply get sacked.

This is what is known as "Management by Violence"

So most people seem to be happy at least that things are out in the open, we now know that the team are sick to the back teeth with the whole Romanov style. It has been pretty obvious for a long time that things were not right and were getting worse. I hope it helps to clear the air and allows us to settle down to a period of stability.

This was a no win situation for Hearts - Dunfermline at Tynecastle, managerless and basically crap. Almost any other weekend and Hearts would have eaten this lot up walked away with 3 or 4 - 0. That scoreline would have vindicated Romanov's pep talk - "see my little submariners, i give you a choice, you win or you die and you win, i know what i am doing". Anyhting less and the team were in danger of being shipped off to Ayrshire on Sunday afternoon.

It was an impassioned opening few minutes, the crowd were clear in their opinions and abundant in their delivery, we were the 12th man and i am sure it was appreciated by the team - Pressley, Hartley and Gordon not the least. I for one was pretty emotional in those opening few minutes, there is a lot of passion and desire and sometimes desperation in the Hearts support at times.
After those initial moments i began to inspect what was on the park - the first question answered with the Riccarton 3 in the team.
But
But
I feel the need to swear
for f&*ks sake
We have 6 defenders on the park and 3 of them are playing in midfield. Doesn't Ivanauskas i mean Malofeev read this blog.
I have no idea if this is 5 - 4 - 1 or 3 - 5 - 2, worse the players have no idea either. Read in the paper that it was a 3 - 4 - 3. I just can't believe it.
Aguar and Brellier both on the bench, these are our two understood first team central midfielders after Hartley so why are they not being played. I just can't believe it.
At the back we played 3 with Goncalves, Pressley and Berra. Good to see Goncalves back but i think he nursed himself through the game, and this smarted of desperation or appeasement to the fans, his comeback has been long awaited now. Why did we have to fanny about with our formation to bring him in. Neilson and Berra seemed to get themselves sorted out on the right but Goncalves and Wallace were seriously dodgy on the left. How many times was Pressley spare in the middle with Goncalves and Wallace overloaded looking at each other.
Tall as our holding midfield, last weeks blog nails my feelings about that to the mast.
Once again Hartley was our only true midfielder so was left to run himself into an early grave or the DSS whichever comes first.
Chesnauskis, Bednar and velicka up front. Can't take anything away from Velicka he seems to know where the goal is but Chesny and Bednar don't look dangerous enough for me just now. But that is not the problem. This time last year, one of our concerns was that all our goals were coming from midfield thanks to Skacel and Hartley by now it was something like 11 and 8. That has now completely dried up and it has dried up because we don't have a bloody midfield!
We play Celtic at the weekend then have Hibs in the diddy cup down at Easter Road, unless whoever picks our team finally acknowledges this fact and lets sanity take it's course we will continue our painfull demise and be sunk by both of those two.
I promised that i would not go back to Easter road after the recent 2 - 2 but bought a ticket today so we better get it sorted, going down there with a bloody Hibby as well.

Oh Aye the game. Hearts actually looked not too bad in the beginning, but it was Dunfermline so i couldn't get too excited about it. Our goal was typically ugly as has been our want over the past weeks. A hopeful ball played through the middle landed between the on rushing Hartley and outrushing keeper. The keeper misjudged and had to parry wide, Hartley got to it and back heeled for an easy tap in by Velicka.
Pressley played like a man possessed for a bit in that first half, at one point he ran the length of the pitch, played a one two and found himself straight through on goal. He skewed his shot wide, if it had gone in we would have scored six.
As the half wore on though our lack of a midfield was becoming more evident as we used the long ball more and more to less and less effect.
Half time

Hearts 1 - Dunfermline 0

Discussing things with my dad at half time, we were both pretty confident that we would get another or two and finish this lot off. So it was to no surprise whatsoever that Jim Hamilton bundled the ball in with his hands by all accounts the level the score.
This Hearts team cannot recover from such knocks. We huffed and puffed but just didn't have it as we got more desperate the football got even longer and less likely to penetrate.
Aguar came on and at least we looked a bit more like a team or at least we might have if Hartley hadn't got pushed far out on the right where Chesny had been before he got hooked.
The one chance we really did have came very late, it fell to Neilson about 16 yards out, he steadied and hit his shot high, struck a head though and flew wide for a corner.

Hearts 1 - Dunfermline 1

And the Hearts first team squad was placed on EBay by Saturday night, apparently Vlad has just offered £25m for them, the big softy that he is.