Superior Hearts Blow It!

Despite fielding yet another side that had Vladimir Romanov's mark stamped all over it i.e. under-strengthed with Lithuanian player overload, Hearts were still able to outplay Celtic for long spells on their own patch. Indeed even the Glasgow press, hardly reknowned for their generosity towards our club in recent times, paid tribute to the Hearts performance and acknowledged that the better side had lost on the day. Perhaps it was easy for them to say this though because Celtic won in the end! I'll take my paranoid hat off now I promise!

The Hearts midfield had the same lightweight look about it that was evident in the recent derby match at Easter Road. However on this occasion they fielded an extra man in the midfield, Bruno Aguiar, which appeared to make the world of difference. That added to the surprisingly assured display of Zaliukas, who was rightly slaughtered after his showing at Easter Road, made it a much more imposing Hearts engine room than in recent weeks. Still, I can't help thinking that the side fielded could and should have been much stronger than it was, but maybe we should be thankful for small mercies at the moment.

How many times have we suffered this sort of sickening late finish at the hands of Celtic?! It used to happen all the time when I first started watching football in the '80s. I remember us being 2-0 up in the '88 season (Robbo and Mike Galloway had us on easy street) and they came back to get a draw courtesy of a dodgy Andy Walker penalty and a McStay screamer in injury time. That was my first taste of that sort of heartbreak, but then we had the awful Scottish Cup semi-final that same year which Henry Smith must still have nightmares about, and several more have followed over the years.

Celtic (and Rangers perhaps to a lesser extent) are reknowned for this sort of never-say-die attitude and you must give them credit for continually being able to salvage unlikely points in this way. That is why these teams are consistently crowned champions and we are not. Celtic's fans complained in exactly the same way as we are now about the number of times that an arguably inferior Rangers side used to grind out results against them in the '90s during their '9 in a row' run. Very often in these matches Celtic would dominate possession and miss chance after chance, only for their hated rivals to nick a late goal with almost their only chance and take points they scarcely deserved. This is exactly what Celtic have done to us in the past couple of years, with the exception of the previous two matches when Hearts got the results.

I suppose in some ways it shows how far we have come when we can say that we're disappointed not to be winning at Parkhead. It's not an unfair statement to say that on every occasion Hearts have faced Celtic in the last two seasons, Hearts have been the better side for long spells. They perhaps have not gotten the breaks or the results they deserved in all of those games, but it's still encouraging to have the knowledge that we have the players capable of outplaying them. In my opinion no other side in the country can say this.

So although we are bitterly disappointed to come away from Parkhead with nothing yesterday, I think we should try and take some positives from it. Firstly, we were able to go there without our leader Pressley and best midfielder Brellier and control most of the game. Secondly the likes of Zaliukas, Tall and even Chesney and Miko, who have all been slaughtered for recent performances, went toe-to-toe with the Champions and largely gave us as good as they got. We should also be encouraged with the goalscoring form of Velicka, although I'm led to believe he should probably have had a hat-trick yesterday.

Thirteen points is one hell of a gap at this stage of the season and I don't think I'm being too defeatist by saying that the league is probably over for us now. But while there's life there's hope and Celtic, who are perhaps not as great as some of us think they are, have the distraction of the Champions League. If they can be pulled in to say seven points and they're still in Europe, then you never know, but I concede that it's a very tough ask.

For Hearts there is still likely to be a long battle ahead to get the Champions League spot again and frankly, if we let that Rangers team finish above us then we really WILL have problems to worry about! Until then, let's just try and keep the heads up and get behind the Jambos.....