Kilmarnock 2 - 2 Hearts: Visitors look to Europe as point proves sufficient return

Published Date: 02 May 2011
By ANDREW SMITH
at RUGBY PARK
HEARTS spent the winter months getting carried away with it all. Now they are simply getting away with it.
Dundee United's defeat at Celtic Park yesterday all but confirms the Tynecastle men as the Scottish Premier League's third-best team and allows them to anticipate a Europa League qualifier in July.

After watching his team throw away a winning position for the second consecutive week - and in so doing equal the SPL's longest drawing run with a fifth straight tied scoreline - Jim Jefferies noted that only United's endeavours would tell him whether he could look upon the point taken from Rugby Park as a progressive one.

It turns out it has proved exactly that, and to make too much of Hearts' indifferent outcomes of late would be to fail to take account where their previously earlier, outstanding form took them.

At one stage they were 15 points in front of United, and while it appears to be taking them far longer than expected to officially haul themselves over the finishing line, the fact they have lost their edge is understandable. That edge has also been blunted by the loss of such as Kevin Kyle and Lee Wallace.

Despite extending their lacklustre recent run to just one win in nine games, Jefferies said he was pleased with the application and appetite of his players. That effort was excelled by Kilmarnock, even if Rugby Park interim manager Kenny Shiels gilded the lily by going on about how much better his team were than their visitors. He enthused over their "invention and expression" and their Alamo-style "waves of attack".

A stirring end allowed Kilmarnock to haul themselves back from 2-1 down with quarter an hour left after poor marking had allowed Hearts' Ryan Stevenson a simple header from a Craig Thomson corner to give Hearts the lead for the first time in the game. Irishman Shiels is looking to talk himself into a job, which, he said on radio afterwards, he "expected to get" in the near future. His team's five-game winless run might also be explained by the Ayrshire club, after a cracking season, having found themselves in a position they cannot much materially alter.

Stevenson admitted that the possibility Hearts have "switched off mentally" in the past two months to allow United to make major inroads into their once commanding lead could not be discounted.

"It is hard to say," he said. "It obviously looks that way. I don't think we did. Maybe we hit a bad stage at the wrong time.

But you have to give credit to Dundee United, not many teams go to Ibrox and get three points.

"We are not playing as we as we did in the middle part of the season but we lost a lot of key players through injury and suspension."

And they have lost one more through the dealings of owner Vladimir Romanov. Marian Kello disappeared again at the weekend, having reappeared the week before after a period in absentia because of a dispute with the club's owner..

Jefferies' response to an enquiry as to where the matter stood was of the "your guess" variety. "We hoped a private matter had been resolved," he said. "It had been last week but now it isn't."

In Kello's absence, Jamie Macdonald took the opportunity to remind all what a good young keeper he is. He made several crucial saves as Hearts looked as if they would nick a win with a couple of fortunate breaks.

After a niggly, non-event of a first period, Jamie Fowler blasted in from 22 yards out - his first Kilmarnock goal for five-and-a-half years and first at Rugby Park in a near 400 game, 14-year career for the Ayrshire club.

For the equaliser seven minutes later, Rudi Skacel poked in a rebound off the bar following a shot from David Templeton that foxed Cammy Bell.

There was no great creativity to Hearts' efforts. A simple corner put them in front, but a cute little flick by Alexei Eremenko inside the box four minutes from time allowed substitute Keiran Agard to put a curling effort in to the top corner.

It should not have ended there for Kilmarnock, with James Dayton squandering a glorious one-on-one to win it at the close.

Taken from the Scotsman