Motherwell 3 - 1 Hearts: Jefferies vents anger over 'worst display' since his return to Hearts

Published Date: 15 March 2010
TONY Mowbray, the Celtic manager, spoke earlier this year of his dream of presiding over footballing Utopia; for the best part of 45 minutes, Craig Brown, of all people, got pretty close to attaining such perfection as his mesmerising young Motherwell side swarmed all over Hearts and laid the foundations for a victory which would lift them to joint third in the SPL, albeit having played two games more than both Dundee United and Hibs.
Granted, Hearts were abysmal. It was hard to believe this was a side which, until Saturday, had the best defensive record in the league outwith the Old Firm and had conceded three goals to Scottish opposition on only one previous occasion this term. They were a complete shambles and most of their players deserving of the condemnation they received from their affronted manager, Jim Jefferies, afterwards. "Disgraceful" and "schoolboy" were some of the words used to describe segments of a performance which he felt was the "worst it's been since I came in".

But to dwell on Hearts' shortcomings would be doing a disservice to Motherwell, who played with the type of poise, pace and panache not instantly synonymous with the Scotland teams most of us recall being sent out by Brown in the nineties. All this on a pitch that remains so bad it really has to be seen with the naked eye to be believed.

The only pity from a Motherwell point of view was that less than 5,000 were there to see it. They're on a roll; unbeaten in 12 under Brown and looking like genuine contenders for third spot, and, if this demolition job is anything to go by, capable of producing football as thrilling as anything else in the SPL. It really is time for the natives of North Lanarkshire to roll up and jump aboard the Brown bandwagon, because those who did bother to turn up were sent bounding out of Fir Park having witnessed something quite scintillating.

Motherwell were ahead after just one minute when Mark Reynolds rose unchallenged to nod in Jim O'Brien's cross after Hearts failed to react to a short corner. John Sutton capitalised on being left embarrassingly unmarked ten yards out to drill home the second with less than quarter of an hour gone and the only surprise was that they only led by two at the break.

Sutton, Lukas Jutkiewicz and Jamie Murphy interchanged at will and Hearts' bedraggled defenders could hardly get near them. Steve Jennings and Keith Lasley bossed midfield, intimidating their lightweight, passive and ponderous opponents. And out on the right flank, O'Brien was the star of the show. Lee Wallace, one of the few Hearts players to escape with pass marks, will rarely have had such a torrid time of it. O'Brien acknowledged afterwards that he's currently in the best form of his life.

And then there's the clean-sheet kings: the Motherwell back four strolled it and looked set to add a 16th shut-out of the season when O'Brien's excellent angled strike in 68 minutes appeared to have knocked the stuffing out of a Hearts side who had mounted something of a second-half revival in the wake of a half-time rollicking. However, substitute David Templeton dashed that hope in 69 minutes when he fired home a consolation with the visitors' first and only attempt on target.

That was of little concern to Brown, however, as he waved his jubilant players off for a week of battery-recharging due to the fact they don't have a game this weekend. "We've got so many guys from distance – they deserve a few days at home," said Brown. "I said to them if you win this game, you're off for a week. It would take a disaster for us not to finish in the top six now."

The same can't be said of Hearts. Currently sixth, St Johnstone are now just six points behind them with three games in hand. They're still missing plenty players who would improve things. For example, Michael Stewart would undoubtedly have made a difference to a midfield in which Larry Kingston, remarkably, was the only one who looked able and willing to try and stem the claret and amber flow. But, as Jefferies acknowledged afterwards, regardless of the lengthy absentee list, the personnel he sent out should still have been able to put up significantly more resistance than they managed here.

"That was not acceptable. The first 20 minutes were disgraceful, the defending… it was real schoolboy stuff," he said. "There is no way we could have won that game. Motherwell were quicker, sharper and hungrier and their work ethic was better. There were a few choice words at half-time and the second half was a bit of an improvement but the only thing on the positive side was the performance of Larry Kingston in the second-half. He was our best player by a long way."

Taken from the Scotsman