THIS WILL BE BIGGEST GAME OF MY LIFE
Hearts star Souttar braced for must-win match with Hamilton
HEARTS are in deep distress on this Valentine’s Day. The club’s love affair with the Scottish Premiership is in serious danger of ending in a messy divorce.
Their confidence has been shattered into a million pieces as they reflect on a season which, so far, has been beyond their worst nightmares.
The sacking of Craig Levein on Halloween and the protracted pursuit of former Barnsley boss Daniel Stendel has yet to yield any kind of meaningful bounce.
In his ten league matches in charge up to Wednesday night’s harrowing 5-0 hammering at Celtic Park, the German has recorded just one win and three draws; claiming just six points out of a possible 30.
Rock bottom at the turn of the year, history is not on the side of the ailing Edinburgh giants.
In seven of the last nine top-flight campaigns, the team who have been at the foot of the league at the end of December have been automatically relegated the following May.
Tomorrow, Stendel’s strugglers host 11th-placed Hamilton — a battle-hardened mob who are a point ahead and have proved more difficult to kill off in years gone by than the Mad Monk Rasputin. So the significance of this game is not lost on anyone down Gorgie way.
In his four years since moving to Tynecastle from Dundee United, John Souttar has graced sell-out Edinburgh derbies as well as playing in last season’s 2-1 Scottish Cup final defeat to Celtic at a packed-out Hampden.
However, given the imperilled state of the capital club, and with just 12 league games left, he sees tomorrow’s relegation clash and next Friday’s trip to face St Mirren as the most important fixtures of his Tynecastle career so far.
‘The next two games are the ones we need to look at — they are the biggest of the season,’ said Scotland centre-back Souttar.
‘The games are as big as I have probably played in since I came to this club. They are huge — and we have to win them.
‘We are bottom of the league and there is no getting away from it — we are in a dogfight.
‘Games are coming round thick and fast right now and we have to step up.’
When Hearts came from behind to beat Rangers 2-1 in January, it looked like they had finally turned the corner under Stendel and his energetic Gegenpressing style of play. But what looked like a new day quickly dissolved into a false dawn.
Indeed, subsequent stumbles for Steven Gerrard’s Ibrox side after the winter break would perhaps suggest that Hearts’ victory over them was not quite the achievement it appeared at the time.
‘Everyone felt that we would kick on after Rangers,’ admitted Souttar.
‘It was a massive result for us but, for whatever reason, we didn’t back it up.
‘The manager has come in and we have had an upturn in form in periods. You can see what he is trying to do. ‘But no matter how we play, we need to win — we need to pick up results. We need to put all our focus on Saturday and go and get a result against Hamilton.’
Hearts will require some serious lifting after being brutalised 5-0 at Celtic Park. On-loan Manchester United goalkeeper Joel Pereira was again found wanting, palming a shot by Odsonne Edouard into the path of Olivier Ntcham, who side-footed home Celtic’s all-important opener.
The 23-year-old keeper had previously blundered in letting a shot from St Johnstone midfielder Ali McCann squirm through his body to make it 2-2 in a match that finished 3-3 at McDiarmid Park a fortnight ago.
Then, after a 3-2 home loss to Kilmarnock that saw Hearts crash back to the foot of the table, Pereira apologised to his team-mates for gifting what turned out to be the winner to Eamonn Brophy.
Stendel tried and failed to get Celtic’s Craig Gordon during the January transfer window and it will be interesting to see if he now turns to either Zdenek Zlamal or Colin Doyle to shore up a defence that has conceded 47 goals this season. Only Hamilton (48) and Ross County (53) have lost more.
But Pereira was not the only failure in a poor performance in the east end of Glasgow that saw Stendel admit his team had played ‘like rabbits in the headlights’.
Accentuating the positive of a decent first half before Ntcham’s opener, Souttar insists Hearts must erase the memory of the heavy loss from their minds and focus solely on the battle against the drop.
‘We’ve got to try to forget about that,’ he argued. ‘It was a terrible night for us as a team.
‘But, as bad as we were, Celtic were good.
‘In the first half, I felt we were in the game. There were periods when we had the ball and we kept possession, which was good.
‘Then we came out and conceded the second goal right away in the second half and that sort of killed us. Everything went against us after that and it was a bad day at the office.
‘We were very poor as a team in the second half against Celtic.
‘However, there is no point feeling sorry for ourselves.
‘We just need to forget it. We can’t dwell on the Celtic game. We can’t let it affect us as the next two games are massive.
‘Everyone has to take responsibility in these next two matches, as we have all played a part in where we are now.
‘What’s done is done. The next two games are huge and we have to win them.’
Stendel, for his part, insists victory over Hamilton would go a long way to repairing his squad’s shattered confidence.
‘It’s a big match, it’s a chance to