Changing of the guard fails to secure faltering Hearts

Hearts 0
Kilmarnock 2 Invincibile 29; Wales 35

WHEN you man the ramparts with different soldiers every week, it shouldn't come as any great surprise if the fortress turns into a refuge for your enemies. On a day when head coach Valdas Ivanauskas made his 59th selection change in 11 matches, Hearts meekly surrendered three points to Kilmarnock and fell a distant eight points behind Celtic in what already looks like a one-horse race for the SPL title.

Coming on top of a home draw with Falkirk and defeat by St Mirren, this latest loss at Tynecastle illustrated why Hearts have been unable to keep tabs on the leaders. Now facing the same pressure as Rangers and Celtic to win every week, Hearts have buckled under the strain with too many of their players failing to make match-winning contributions.

According to Craig Gordon, who earned a point for his side with an astonishing injury-time save in the Edinburgh derby the previous Sunday, not enough of his colleagues are going the extra mile for Hearts. The goalkeeper believes the same group of players at Tynecastle are constantly expected to dig the team out of bother when things go wrong. Although he didn't name the guilty men, you didn't need to be a mind reader to figure out that the kernel of Scottish internationalists at Tynecastle want to see evidence of more desire from their team-mates.

"They need to show a bit of passion when we pull on the jersey," said Gordon, a lifelong Hearts supporter as well as one of the best young goalkeepers in Europe. "There are a lot of guys who do that week-in, week-out for this club. But we need that [response] from everyone if we're going to be successful. Some come to the fore all the time. Others have to step up to the plate and play for the fans, the jersey and the club. We need everyone to pull in the same direction and take responsibility."

Although disturbed by the lack of response from a number of players when Hearts fell behind against Kilmarnock, Gordon didn't argue with the suggestion that the rotation system implemented by Ivanauskas had sapped both cohesion from the team performance and confidence from individual players uncertain of keeping their places. Perhaps only at Tynecastle would a striker, Andrius Velicka, score twice in a local derby and then find himself dropped.

The signs of fragmentation at Hearts were also evident on Saturday in the crowd's lack of enthusiasm for a confusing selection policy. Julien Brellier, who knitted the team together in midfield last season, was again omitted from the squad and the supporters chanted the Frenchman's name throughout the second-half. Like Andy Webster before him, Brellier's recent absence from the team-sheet seems to be related to the lack of a signature on an extended contract. Certainly, it cannot be football related since both Ibrahim Tall and Marius Zaliukas have struggled to fill the defensive midfield position that Brellier made his own.

Ivanauskas did not turn up for the post-match press conference to explain the absence of Brellier, or the bewildering substitutions which saw the team play without a left-back for half an hour or the perplexing lack of fight shown in the second-half. The official explanation for this no-show was that the coach was in a meeting and wanted more time to consider his comments. Whatever Ivanauskas had to say to the players, it's thought Steven Pressley, the captain, told the coach about the concerns of senior men in the dressing-room regarding the negative impact of constant tinkering on performances and results.

It's a measure of how far Hearts have fallen from the heights of 2005 - a year ago they led the Premierleague by six points - that any fair-minded judge who analysed the second-half of this match might expect Kilmarnock, who meet Celtic at Rugby Park on Sunday, to finish closer to Gordon Strachan's men than the Edinburgh club. Strong in defence, neat in midfield and tireless up front, Kilmarnock outplayed Hearts after the interval and might have won even more convincingly.

True, Hearts began well enough and were the dominant force early on when recalls for Robbie Neilson, Roman Bednar, Edgaras Jankauskas and Mirsad Beslija improved on a slack performance against Hibs. But the loss of a brace of goals against the run of play and the lack of a potent scoring threat in attack (no Hearts player has contributed more than three league goals this season) snuffed out any creativity.

Instead of passing their way out of trouble, Hearts relied on a series of boots up the park in the desperate hope that Kilmarnock might fall on their own swords. Unlike Hibs the previous weekend, however, the Ayrshire club made no offer to buy one goal and get one free.

Although reluctant to criticise his former club, Jim Jefferies, who took three points from Tynecastle for the first time in six years, was puzzled by this stone-age approach to the game. "Hearts relied on too many long balls," he observed. "We played all the football."

The Rugby Park manager readily agreed, mark you, that his side were second best at the start of the match when their 4-3-3 formation didn't work. It was only after Steven Naismith dropped back into midfield and Kilmarnock matched Hearts' 4-4-2 selection that they exploited a slip by Pressley (who reckoned his heels were tapped by striker David Fernandez) and opened the scoring thanks to a diagonal shot from Danny Invincibile.

When Beslija also lost his footing ten minutes before the interval, Gary Wales eluded Gordon with a shot which deflected off Christophe Berra. While Kilmarnock's two goal lead was a travesty of the run of play in the first-half, the Ayrshire club improved the longer the game went on as Hearts deteriorated. In the end, the margin of victory should have been greater.

Taken from the Scotsman