NAISMITH ADMITS HEARTS HAVE CONFIDENCE CRISIS
STENDEL’S MEN STUCK AT BOTTOM:
WHAT’S that old tune that keeps springing to mind? Oh yeah. There’s a hole in my bucket.
No, not merely because the new main stand at Tynecastle — all £18million of it — remains about as rain-proof as a colander that’s been peppered with buckshot.
It’s just that the famous children’s song is all about a deadlock situation.
In order to mend the bucket, the protagonist needs straw that has to be cut with a knife, which requires sharpening with a stone that is too dry — but can’t be wet because there’s no way of carrying the water, what with the bucket having a hole in it and all…
Hey, don’t knock it. Joseph Heller ran with the idea and wrote Catch
22. Hearts fans familiar with that piece of cult fiction will see where this is going.
Daniel Stendel’s team desperately need some confidence to carry them into the teeth of this relegation battle.
In order to gain that confidence, they are going to have to start picking up some results. And, no, 2-2 at home to ten-man Hamilton Accies most definitely doesn’t count.
To begin gathering points by the handful, though, the Hearts players will need to start playing with a bit of dash and daring. Taking the odd chance, even.
And that requires confidence. Something which they just can’t seem to acquire because of the poor results.
It’s not that the Jambos players don’t understand the severity of the situation, an accusation too lightly thrown in their direction over recent months.
Rather, their acute awareness of what is at stake — the real danger of relegation — is partly responsible for a collective inability to think clearly.
Amid his rallying words of warning and his cajoling cries to go over the top, veteran attacker Steven Naismith admitted that the youngsters in the Tynecastle squad, in particular, are showing the signs of strain.
Reflecting on a match that could well have ended in a thumping home loss had Jamie Hamilton’s red card after 20 minutes not reduced the visitors’ numbers, Naismith admitted: ‘Even when Accies went down to ten men, people think: “Oh, 11 against ten, it’s going to be easy for Hearts”.
‘But, if anything, it becomes more difficult for the players — especially the younger ones — to go out and play the risky passes. When they come off, they’re the rewarding passes, the ones that break the lines and create chances.
‘But it becomes difficult because, if you don’t make it, the crowd are on you — and it just brings a bit more nerves, a bit more unsettled feeling from the stands.
‘One hundred per cent, we have to realise where we are. A hundred per cent.
‘The league, in general, has split the way people would naturally think. Mostly.
‘The teams at the bottom are fighting and they’ve done that regularly. St Mirren have done it and stayed up via the play-offs.
‘We can’t be arrogant enough to just say that we’re the better players, we’re the bigger club, we deserve to win these games.
‘Because that’s not how football works. Everybody is rooting for the underdogs.
‘So, it’s only the guys in that changing room who can fix this. That has to happen in the weeks coming up.
‘The players need to stand up. Throughout this season, it has been individual mistakes.
‘There are only so many times a manager can say it needs to be better. Players themselves need to take the responsibility — and man up.’
It may already be too late for Hearts. Because, taking the past five seasons as evidence, they’re going to need at least — at the very least — 32 or 33 points just to secure a relegation play-off.
They’re on 19 at the moment, with 11 games remaining. Do you see them beating St Mirren in Paisley on Friday night? Or winning the derby at Easter Road after the break for Scottish Cup quarter-final duty?
You cannot leave it all until after the split. Something needs to change now. Yet the signs are not good.
They fell behind after just five minutes on Saturday, Marios Ogkmpoe finishing from a Scott Martin cross after David Moyo had simply used his body to prevent John Souttar from coping with a straight pass through the middle of the Hearts back four. You may have seen this very goal conceded before. Not so long ago.
Worse was to come when, thanks to returning goalkeeper Bobby Zlamal putting him in trouble with a pass that no one would ever want, Souttar was mobbed inside his own penalty area — and Sean Clare had to bring down Ogkmpoe to concede a penalty.
Which the big man duly converted. Crisis time for Hearts.
Accies teenager Jamie Hamilton’s third red card of the season, this one for handball, fell into a category of its own. Soft? Maybe. But it could have been avoided if he had just dealt more confidently with a bouncing through ball heading back towards his own goal.
It took until two minutes after the half-time interval for Hearts to capitalise on their numerical superiority, Jamie Walker applying the cool finish.
Cue the inevitable cavalry charge, complete with centre-half Craig Halkett deployed at centreforward just in time to bag an equaliser with three minutes remaining.
Oh, the home side had chances of varying quality. In a numbers game, they usually had enough in and around the danger area to cause problems.
But it was rattled, ragged, rag-tag stuff. Not the display of a team who believed in their ability to outplay the opposition.
Hearts looked, in short, a group of guys struggling to cope with the
pressure. Not just the strain of fighting against the drop. But the demands of a support who are right to expect much, much better.
Naismith, never one to mollycoddle a team-mate or shirk from reality, admitted: ‘As a professional player at this level, striving to be better, you have to accept that.
‘You’re playing for Hearts. There is a pressure there. Players need to accept it — and thrive on it.
‘I’ve talked in the past about how, when I was younger, I thrived on that demand. That made me a better player. As a team, we need to grasp that and move forward.’