The Mirror

"Some day your gonna have to face, the deep dark truthful mirror"

Elvis Costello - deep dark truthful mirror

An awful lot of people who had successfully been avoiding the inevitable view into the abyss had no choice yesterday. For most of us inside the stadium during that second half we looked long and and we looked hard into that mirror and not one of us liked what we saw.

We were a shambolic shadow of Heart of Midlothian Football Club a team in disarray and with nowhere to hide, a team imploding in on itself on and off the pitch.

Over the past year or so a number of supporters of other clubs have expressed their opinion, their consternation, at the lack dissenting voices coming from the terraces of our beloved football ground, as (from their perspective) Romanov rips the heart and soul out of our club.

"This would never happen at Ibrox ya bunch of spineless morons"

some blue nosed eejit

Well to that statement, i can reply now that the world is changing, there was a tectonic shelf shift at Tynecastle yesterday - the terrace was not placid and the dissenting voices were loud and very, very angry.

A seminal point for our club where now the numbers of non believers in the grass roots support is very close to critical mass. If the performance of the team does not improve and quickly things are about to get very ugly.

Talked to a Dundee Utd supporter on Friday, asked if he was going to the game, how he thought his team would get on etc. He replied that he would not be going because Levein has turned them into the most boring team in living memory. He was p'd off that some of their supporters are actually happy about this simply because they don't get horsed anything like as much as they used to. I can see his point but i can also see the others who are fed up of years and years of hounding's by us and just about everyone else in the league. He expected a tough, boring game that was just as likely to be 0 - 0 as anything else. Have to say i pretty much agreed with his prediction. The loss of Larry Kingston being the most important detractor to a victory for the good guys. Without Larry i just couldn't see where any of the football was going to come from. I was slightly encouraged then when it became clear that Bruno Aguair would be replacing him in central midfield. Only slightly encouraged mind you since he could hardly be match fit as he has been out for a good couple of months now and in any case he needs some mettle around him. That mettle was hardly going to come from Soli Mikoliunas, Andy Driver or the completely pointless Philibaitus!

So i fully expected a dull drawn out game that we might just squeeze a goal out of if we are lucky.

Time to look into that mirror folks, the deep dark one.

When was the last time you can remember when we did not play out a dull drawn out game where if we did squeeze out a victory it was not of the grudgingly annoying kind.

The mirror does not lie, we are rotten and have been all season.

There was a bloke phoned into James Trainor last night, an aged statesmanlike Hearts supporter who talked intelligently and lucidly about the reasons why he can no longer go along to Tynecastle to watch the team he has supported for the last 60 years. There was no malice, or vented rage or screaming spleen from this man, just a well constructed, insightful and undeniably logical argument laid forward to the listening public.

I will not go into the details of the argument other than it centred around the vanity of Vladimir Romanov as the central cause of the clubs ailments.

It was truly harrowing to hear this man talk.

The game ( or the first 70- minutes of it anyway )

Ok so the first part of this blog reads like a death march. You know what tho that game could have gone either way. There are only two problems to be dealt with - the first being the reason why the dug out did not change the shape of the team after Ibrahim Tall had been ordered off, until it was far too late? That is a question that we all need an answer to.

The second problem is the nature of the teams shambolic collapse under the weight of going behind. That is the mirrors reflection that we all see today if we are brave enough to recap that game in our heads.

The first half was off the now mechanically reconstituted standard boring crap we are forced to sit through week in week out. Very little of note in a positive sense from Hearts and the usual one or two defensive lapses that we just got away with. I was annoyed almost immediately by the referee and had decided inside of 5 minutes that he was intent on ruining any chance this game had of flowing anywhere. This annoyance, the ref eclipsed though, midway through the first half when he ordered off Ibrahim Tall for Hearts and Robertson for Utd. Handbags at dawn and no way a straight red card for both players - the ref lost the plot and made a mockery of the game. Hearts allowed this to affect them far more than it affected Dundee Utd however, basic tactical screw up on our part. The sendings off turned Dundee Utd's 4-5-1 into a 4-4-1 but Hearts allowed our shape to remain at 3-4-2 and worse we did not shift the back 3 around we just left a gaping hole down our right side?? Amazing really that it took Dundee Utd half an hour to exploit this fully.

HT

Hearts 0

Dundee Utd 0

Noticed at Half time that the concourse of Gorgie stand has been resurfaced with some non-slip, maroon coating. At least we won't slip in the rush to get out of this place i thought.

I mentioned to my dad that it would be just like the thing for these guys to score against us, that goal came in the 51st minute but my dad did not see it, he had already had enough and made for the exits.

Like i said this game could have gone either way, The goal came from a breakaway after a corner to Hearts, which concluded a period of some pressure we had exerted. They broke away though and used the vast open space that Tall had been marshaling, to advance into the box. A pass to the back post and a low drive into the net.

I don't think the Dundee Utd supporters could quite believe they had scored, it was a sleepy response from them.

Hearts immediately entered panic mode.

Jankauskas had come on at half time for Velicka who looks more like a first division player every time he plays - what happens with these guys? he seemed like a 15 goal a season player when he first got here. Jankauskas took this as his cue to start throwing himself around every time a defender came near him. More than anyone this guy for me represents the problems we have. He obviously has ( had ) talent, but he just can't be arsed he is here for a wage and nothing else. An overpaid prema-donna who is sucking the life out of our club, he has absolutely got to go in the summer!

Miko and Driver at least upped their game and made more direct runs into and around the box, one run saw Driver cut the ball back to Aguair on the edge of the box, he drove hard but the ball was always rising and missed over by a foot or two. If that had gone in, Hearts would have won the game!

Not to be within seconds a long ball forward by Utd saw their forward heading goal ward with only Goncalves in front of him. I swear i have never seen anything like it in all my born days but Goncalves actually managed to move away from the ball? he created more space for the Utd forward to move into? The gaping hole on the right was still there of course, now filled only by Utd's Robson, the pass to him was far to easy, he took it and slotted the ball home.

Now brilliantly awake the Dundee Utd support responded with much more gusto, now in belief that they were going to win against Hearts for the first time in donkeys years.

I just about got up and walked out right there and then.

Hearts entered double super panic mode.

One highlight and the only thing left for the support to cheer about was the introduction of youngster Glen who came on for Pospisil. Pospisil unlike Jankauskas has obviously no talent, he is and always has been simply an impostor who should not be allowed to wear the Hearts jersey again. He absolutely must go in the summer!

Pospisil was booed roundly as he walked off the pitch, his response was to sarcastically applaud the crowd. He has never really made it here, never become one of our favourites, for me that is the last straw for him, just get tae, that's all i can say to that.

The introduction of this 16 year old into the cataclysm of this match seemed out of order to me, what the hell were we expecting him to do about this and just what were we expecting him to learn - Look son, just so you know, this is what a team in self destruct mode looks like?

The 3rd goal was another slice through the Hearts defence with us on the back foot and all mis-shapen, i got of my seat and was heading for the exit before the ball hit the back of the net.

I did not therefore see the 4th goal but i will eat my hat if it wasn't just like the rest.

As i walked down from my seat there was a bloke who had climbed over and onto the pitch, he was screaming abuse at the Hearts dug out. He had his young kid on the pitch with him, the wee guy could only have been 5 or 6. He was screaming, very upset, trying desperately to haul is enraged father off the pitch. It was a shameful sight, i hope he regrets his actions today, he will no doubt get plenty of time to regret them because he threw his season ticket book onto the pitch as he finally left.

We go down to Easter Road in a couple of weeks. They will now be buoyant after their well deserved League Cup win today. If we have not got our act together by then ( somehow ) we could be on for a desperate afternoon that could blow our EUFA hopes completely out of the water.

So if not for anything other than a desperate plea to the sporting gods

HOOOOO ON THE JAMBOS