The Hearts players owe the fans big time – and if they don’t beat Petrocub in the Europa Conference League then they deserve everything that comes their way.
The bottom line is the final group clash at home to the Moldovans is now the biggest game of the season. They need to win to qualify. And they should be beating a team who are third in the Moldovan league. They should be able to sweep Petrocub aside and I really think they will because again, the stadium will be sold out and the fans will get behind them just like they always do.
You just hope maybe, with Lawrence Shankland coming back, having scored a couple against Dundee, he goes on a prolific run. It would be amazing and they can try to take that positive into the league.
But the flip side of that coin is if they don’t win, they absolutely deserve pelters, and I mean everyone from the top to bottom of the club. You’d surely think with the quality Hearts have, the players they’ve got, they wouldn’t be sitting bottom of the league a week before Christmas. But here we are.
From Andrew [McKinlay] all the way down to all the players, they deserve everything that’s coming to them right now and if they don’t get through tomorrow night. There is never ever just blame on one person, but as I said, it would be from top to bottom.
It’s amazing that Andrew is slinking away from the responsibility. He needs to take responsibility first and foremost for his actions, his decisions, which have been poor.
And it filters all the way down to Naisy [Steven Naismith] losing his job, it wasn’t good enough then, to the players’ performances. I’d never criticise the new manager Neil Critchley because I actually think he’s been decent since he came.
Until you get a couple of transfer windows you can’t judge him. I like the way, even on Sunday, he just came out and was critical of the players. What the players have produced this year has been miles off representing Hearts.
The thing is they are good enough players to be sitting third, fourth or fifth. For them to be sitting bottom of the league … and regardless whether people say, ‘oh by the end of the season we’ll be in the top six’ or not, it’s not good enough.
The facts are the facts right now, we’re a week away from Christmas and we’re sitting bottom of the league. It’s embarrassing. To see the amount of fans that travel to Copenhagen, to then go and travel to Kilmarnock three days later. The players should be brass affronted with themselves.
Think of the amount of people that are spending money to come and watch them and they are serving up that rubbish. I genuinely wouldn’t be able to show my face! That on Sunday against Kilmarnock I have never seen anything like it. It was just shocking.
For Kilmarnock to go down to 10 men but Hearts were devoid of ideas. There was no personality. Nobody was there taking the game by the scruff of the neck.
They could still have been playing there against Kilmarnock today and not yet scored. Never once in my time – even in administration – did we ever let ourselves down like that.
As much as we were bottom but we were always close, even the year when we were 15 points behind. I think if we didn’t have that points deduction, we would have finished sixth or seventh.
For Hearts to be sitting bottom of the league is embarrassing. So the immediate future is that they need to get a result tomorrow night. Following the Conference League clash, they have two massive home games against St Johnstone and Hibs.
That could lift the mood because being bottom of the league is such a negative. It is wild that a club like Hearts could be looking at another relegation.
The next six to eight weeks are so big for the club, and that’s obviously a spell with the window in it as well. See all the teams running about them, they’ve all done it year in, year out. I don’t think that our players are strong enough to deal with a relegation battle, I genuinely don’t.
They’re certainly not showing it just now. St Johnstone usually find their way out, Ross County are the same and Kilmarnock produced on Sunday when the chips were down.
I don’t know if it gets to the nitty-gritty stage, if the Hearts players are strong enough. Have they got enough heart to do it? Right now the answer would be ‘no’.
So, the next three games they’ve got to win. They have to get through tomorrow, and then they’ve got to take six points from the next two home games. That’s a must.