Rubberneckin

Today is the day after the latest episode in the continuing unravelling of Heart of Midlothian Football club.
At the end of last season i remember reading a pile of comments on various sites from, mostly jealous Hibee fans, they would say something like - Just wait til next season where it will all unravel and you will be left homeless and devoid of any hope, after that mental Vlad has torn the Hearts out of your team then F&*ked Off, Ha ha ha ha BELIEVE.
Never knew where those eejits were coming from or why other than just the jealousy factor of Hearts doing not bad considering.
Well now i am not so sure, maybe they had a point.

It goes a bit like this, and you understand this is purely my take on the situation from my limited vantage point.
That statement two weeks ago from Pressley, i said at the time - it read like an abdication of his Captaincy. And so it turns out.
Another head coach ( interim ( aren't they all )) is appointed and Pressley blows again, i think he may well have just gone off on one, a step too far ( who could blame him really but the statement he made was the killer for me, his days were always numbered after that ). Apparently the management team at Tynecastle attempted to orchestrate a vote of no confidence in their captain by the players. This sounds all too much like a coup it is like some great communist plot to overthrow the aristocracy. You just couldn't write it.
Elvis gets wind of this and walks stating that he is not mentally able to play tonight.
Hartley was asked to captain the team and when he refused was dropped, then Neilson was asked to captain the team and when he refused he was dropped too. Then Gordon was asked if he would captain the team, when he refused he was dr.. no he wasn't Stevie Banks was injured so we only had 3rd choice keeper so Gordon wasn't dropped.
Finally Berra accepted the captaincy for the night.
It is all just too sad for words really, to watch this great institution parade its dirty washing so puclicly it hurts us deeply. Like an episode of Jerry f'n Springer we look like a bunch of inbreds screaming and bawling like a bunch of uneducated morons.
I fear for Pressley at Hearts, i fear his time may be up but all that really bothers me about that is that his end is not as it should be, he should waltz into retirement or player coaching role after a glorious Hearts career with his head well and truly held high, marked down as one of the truly great captains of this team. No matter how much bloody money or power Romanov thinks he has got he has absolutely no right whatsoever to deny Elvis this privilege. That said the statement made by the big man was just enough rope that he handed straight to himself.

New coach from, you guessed it Kaunas, their season is over, they have another league title and don't need a coach for a couple of months so we get him. Romanov must have worked it out that league titles in Lithuania are not the same thing as league titles in Scotland. No disrespect and come on lets not play down our downtrodden game again, it is a sight more difficult to negotiate a challenge over here than it is over there. This merry-go-round or Lithuanian's is not going to do the job. You could take them all back bar Chesny and Velicka and have almost any bog standard Scottish manager and the team would improve overnight.

After the initial 20 minutes of the Falkirk v Hearts game which i watched in the Railway in Juniper Green, Falkirk started to play footbal around us. The thought crossed my mind that i didn't really expect to see any football from Hearts, instead it was like rubbernecking a crash on the opposite side of the bypass, it all seemed to go in slow motion you knew you shouldn't but you just couldn't help watching with morbid fascination. By this morning i decided that in Hearts we are actually witnessing a gargantuan train wreck, it hasn't even happened yet but the rails are beginning to buckle under our wheels and the carraiges are beginning to rear up in the air.

Said it before but it just makes no sense, If for whatever politics you feel the need to drop 2 of your back 4 then for all footballing gods you must retain the other two. So Tall and Goncalves were nowhere to be seen either, the back 4 then was,
Wallace, Berra, Zaliukas, Karipidis
The midfield without Hartley, had at least a couple of midfielders Brellier and Aguair, Brellier ( never thought he would ever play for Hearts again ) looked pretty much off the pace from start to finish.
Hearts actually started the game OK, if totally disjointed allows that. We had a couple of decent efforts in the first 20 minutes and could easily have been 2 up. Falkirk owned the last half of the first period tho. Did not really do much. That Stokes bloke looked for too much like he was thinking 'I am really only here on loan you know, actually i play for The Arsenal' some decent touches but mostly he just got frustrated and lashed out a bit.
Half time came and it is 0 - 0
Hearts what the hell can you say about us, the one thing we most definitely are not is a football team, just a bunch of players who happen to get paid by the same club. This shows so much in our game. No one knows where anyone else is, or has any idea what is expected of them, we play the game far to far away from each other and no one is making any runs and oh it is just crap.
This disjointed aberration continued in the second half but at least we were fighting, we were winning every 50 50, got to put this down to the much maligned Baresa and Brellier and the back 4 and Miko ( had not a bad game considering ). One split second of space for Aguair to find Velicka, he collected still outside the box and took it early, keeper should have got it but hey, you gotta take that.
From the minute we scored we dropped ten yards and handed the game to Falkirk, aaarrggh
Mole did have a chance as he was clean through just to hit straight at the keeper, pretty shoddy and he should be left out of things for a while. Reminds me of the mental decision to loan out Callum Elliott ???
It was innevitable really that Falkirk would equalise, a well worked carving of the Hearts defence allowed Latapy to stroke the ball low into the corner.

1 - 1 a fair reflection on the proceedings.
Falkirk could have won it right at the death, but fortunately for us we managed to scramble away.

Must take umbridge at the Setanta commentary, it was so clear that Hearts could do no right and Falkirk could do no wrong. There was good and bad on both sides but no real balance there. The best example being a wee knock in the back of Latapy ( a foul for sure ) but the wee man flings himself down for a blatant dive not a word from the commentary. If that had been one of the Lithuanians they would have been all over it as more evidence of the cancer Heart of Midlothian Football Club have allowed into our beautiful game.. give it up for gods sake.
Everyone knows that the media attack a wounded animal like a bunch of hyenas but it really is going too far, it really is not helping the situation.

Lastly, i took note of the body language etc of Hartley / Neilson on the bench, they did not look in the least bit perturbed to me. No idea what to make of that but i expected soor pusses.

Lastly ( again ) Malofeev, attacks the 4th official and gets sent off and apparently takes it out on the changing room furniture - working for Vlad sure is a stressful gig.