A TAILSPIN AT TYNECASTLE
Hearts drop deeper into despair as Hibs soar to derby victory
DERBY day inevitably produces dozens of individual snapshots chronicling the joy, anguish, delight and despair that sweeps across Scotland’s capital city when its footballing tribes collide.
For the thousands upon thousands of Hearts fans who left Tynecastle without waiting for the final whistle on this Boxing Day clash, however, the real concern may not lie in anything specific exposed by the freeze-frame cruelty of a loss to their great rivals — but in how a single home loss fits into an extremely worrying bigger picture.
Put bluntly, Daniel Stendel is now at the helm of a team caught in a potentially inescapable tailspin.
He is the first Hearts manager to lose his first four games since 1938, a fact that isn’t made any less worrying by its slightly quirky quality.
Stuck at the foot of the Premiership, and with only Sunday’s visit of Aberdeen to go before the mid-season break, they are guaranteed to endure a winter hiatus of rampant discontent. All of it self-inflicted.
Amid the ruins of yesterday’s defeat, the home side left the field to insults and challenges from a small group of fans whose patience had been pushed well beyond breaking point.
They’d seen enough to know how this movie ends. Been through the misery of relegation — and worse — recently enough to understand that losing teams don’t just turn their form around in a heartbeat. This merely confirmed their worst fears.
Against a Hibernian side who are no one’s idea of the absolute elite, a team who turned up to play hard and capitalise on obvious opposition weaknesses, Hearts played with a sense of desperation mirrored in the atmosphere at this once-mighty fortress.
Two first-half Martin Boyle goals, both set up by Scott Allan, did the damage to a team who have taken plenty of concussive body shots over the course of the campaign.
Yes, Hearts were better in the second half. With the game gone, they threw energy and bodies forward to create a number of more-than-decent chances.
But there was never any great groundswell of feeling to suggest that they could pull this one out of the fire. Least of all among a home support who would appear — with good reason — to have given up on the men paid to wear the maroon jerseys.
Stendel himself sounds like a man on the brink of doing just that, his best attempts at optimism withering in the face of fresh evidence; the has-beens and neverwozzers in this group will clearly be gone as soon as he can find able replacements. All part of the great mid-season rebuild to come.
Whatever Stendel’s grand plan might have been for this particular fixture, alas, it unravelled just as the game clock in the corner ticked over to show five minutes and 20 seconds gone.
Another inch-perfect moment of passing genius from Allan to unlock the Hearts defence? Well, kind of.
The midfielder, out on the left flank and facing the touchline, definitely glanced over his shoulder before hooking a high ball into the box; he knew what he wanted to happen, all right.
As Christophe Berra got caught flat-footed by the up-and-under, Boyle positioned himself to score with a sweetly-struck volley.
It’s not that the visitors were absolutely dominating play at this stage. Indeed, Allan was finding it hard to find room against the pairing of Loic Damour and Michael Smith.
Until, that is, Damour decided to dawdle a tenth of a second too long when trying to control a bouncing ball while facing his own goal.
Allan did nothing more brilliant than stick out a toe to poke the ball away from the midfielder — enough to send Boyle scampering between the Hearts central defensive pairing.
The Australian international then did absolutely brilliantly to turn this half break into a great chance, angling his run away from Craig Halkett and across Berra — the perfect move to neutralise both defenders — before scoring with a crisp, low shot.
With just over half an hour gone, Hearts were two down. And looking like a team who could ship more goals at any moment.
The home crowd turned, with Jake Mulraney bearing the brunt of the criticism.
Throwing on Euan Henderson and Oliver Bozanic for Aidan White and Damour at half-time definitely changed the tempo of the game, while Uche Ikpeazu continued to make himself a nuisance.
Ryotaro Meshino had a couple of chances to shoot, one forcing a save and the other squirming wide, while Henderson forced a fine double save from Ofir Marciano.
But opportunities not taken only added to the frustration, each missed chance providing another piece of a miserable, bleak, representation of a club in crisis.
HEARTS (4-2-3-1): Pereira 6; Clare 6, Halkett 5, Berra 5, Hickey 6; Smith 6, Damour 4 (Bozanic 46); Mulraney 5 (Keena 77), Meshino 6, White 4 (Henderson 45); Ikpeazu 5. Subs not used: Zlamal, Wighton, MacLean, Dikamona. Booked: Smith, Mulraney, Henderson. HIBERNIAN (4-1-2-1-2): Marciano 7; Naismith 6, McGregor 7, Hanlon 6, Stevenson 6; Hallberg 6; Slivka 6, Horgan 6 (Newell 72); Allan 6 (Mallan 68); Boyle 8, Doidge 7. Subs not used: Bogdan, James, Jackson, Shaw, Murray. Booked: Slivka, Boyle. Man of the match: Martin Boyle. Referee: Don Robertson. Attendance: 19,313.