Punch drunk

Sometimes, watching Hearts this year has felt like watching the referee count out some punch drunk hasbeen, who should have jacked it in years before.

Yesterdays game against Kilmarnock was one of those days.
I was really looking forward to the game, i have enjoyed games against Kilmarnock recently, because generally they come to Tynecastle and play football, and generally we win.

A bad, bad day for Hearts tho.
Things are going pretty seriously pear shaped just now, the crowd at Tynecastle are definitely losing their patience and i can see things getting pretty nasty if we don't improve. The biggest problem for the support is thay they are pretty much to a man clear in the ideas that -

1. The rotation system is not working - the constant tinkering with the team is having a detrimental effect.
2. Valdas is not picking the best team. Is Valdas picking the team at all, no idea? Whatever, the best 11 is not walking onto the park at 3pm on a Saturday.
3. Valdas's substitutions are bizarre at times and have a low success rate.

Yesterday showed me once again tho that there is a deeper problem than those. Hearts are just pretty pish and thats the truth of it. There is some stat i heard earlier this year that goes something like -

The team in Scotland outwith the gruesome twosome that has some measure of success ( like a cup win or finish high up the league ) in one season, generally has a shocker the next. Flirts with relegation even. The 98 - 99 season if i remember rightly was a bit of a shocker. It is as if the emotional energy required/expended on the exploits of the season before need to be paid back in the next. It is only the old firm that are big enough and ugly enough to sustain the constant drive to perpetual challenge on all fronts. There may be some truth in that. In any case Hearts don't look like they have the Heart for it just now.

I was pretty disparaging of Hibs inability to hold onto a 2 goal lead last week, but i am even more certain of that after Kilmarnock's stroll through the last hour of the game yesterday. The catalyst for both goals was a slip by some Hearts player. Pressley hitting the turf to allow the space to open up for Naysmith to run into and create the chance for the first. Beslija slipping just as he tried to play the ball out of defence which allowed the Kilmarnock attack to pounce. In both cases tho there was still work to do and the first at least was a cracking finish. The second was deflected to beat Gordon. If anything Hearts were marginally the better team when the goals came, which added to the feeling of - a left to the ribs followed by a right upper cut straight on the chin. Hearts deserved nothing out of the game from that point on, there was only one winner.

Worryingly it feels like any team could do this to Hearts at the moment. We had a stroll against Dundee Utd a couple of weeks back but if they had gone into an early lead ( and they could have ) i am not sure if we could have pulled it back. If we get in front we can beat anyone in this league, but that is no certainty and it is only when we are in front that we seem to find ourselves and start to play like a team. I said plenty of times last year that if hearts are not 2 up by half time then i am worried. Now i am confident enough when the first goes in - it just isn't happening often enough.

Dissection :

Tactically, we play the long ball to the front two far far too often, and in that front two yesterday we had Jankauskas back from an 8 week injury and Bednar who forgive me but just hasn't got it when he is expected to deal with a high ball knocked 40 yards and a big centre half up his ass. I don't think he won a single ball in the air all day ( he has never been any good at that ) Hearts however continued to pump long balls at him all day - i just despair. We were pretty much forced into that situation given that the management seem incapable of playing two midfielders in the centre of midfield, leaving Hartley. Paul Hartley is forced into turning in some superhuman performance every week jsut to keep the midfield from capitulating completely. This weeks nonsense was Tall in with Hartley, Tall our right back or perhaps centre back. Look Valdas - Tall does not have the mobility of a midfielder, he struggles with the football too when in there. We do have the midfielders, so why on earth Aguair was not on the park from the beginning is beyond credibility. The crowd knew this and expressed their vitriol by calling for Brellier, and sure he would have done the trick in there too but i fear he is a lost cause now and it was Aguair who was on the bench.

Aguair did come on, too late ofcourse ( another of Valdas's well documented failures and general frustrations ). It was a bad day for Hearts, no one was playing well, we were struggling just to knock the ball forward with any degree of accuracy, far too many efforts were skewed, technically poor. Aguair however was again spraying balls 40 yards straight onto the feet of our wingers, he can do this with his eyes shut and no one else at Tynecastle can so why?

Dunfermline at Tynecastle next week and we have again layered loads of pressure onto ourselves - i do not expect a pretty start to the game and it could be tense throughout. I speak for the whole of the Hearts support tho when i say that we all need to see some logic applied to the team selection. We need some consistency and we need a bloody midfield!