Hearts 5-2 Saints

By Stuart Gillespie
Updated Saturday, 14th January 2012

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Saints suffered a disastrous afternoon at Tynecastle as they found themselves on the end of a hammering from 10 man Hearts thanks to a Rudi Skacel hat-trick.

To lose to the Jambos by three goals if they had 11 men would be bad. Losing to them in that fashion when they had 10 - and we were 2-1 up at one point - is completely unacceptable. Even with our previous troubles against teams with less than 11 players we should have been looking to take at least a point from Gorgie. Instead, not only do we end up with nothing, we suffer a rather embarrassing defeat.

Once again we went behind ridiculously earlier, Marius Zaliukas scoring from a corner inside the first minute. So not only had Hearts managed to score inside 60 seconds, they even managed to force a corner too. Brilliant.

Fortunately, things got better 10 minutes or so later when Kenny McLean played a neat ball over the top for Paul McGowan and as the forward got ready to shoot Zaliukas pulled him back. The Hearts defender was sent off, McGowan scored the spot-kick and we were all square.

And before we'd even managed to reach the 20 mark we were in front. Marc McAusland went on a great run and sent in a fantastic cross for Steven Thompson - back from injury - to head home. Sadly, that was as good as it got and Rudi Skacel equalised for Hearts a few minutes later to send the sides in level at the break.

Skacel's only previous hat-trick for Hearts came against us - and now he has two trebles against the Buddies. In the 64th minute he lashed home from a John Sutton lay-off and five minutes later thundered another left footed shot past Samson. The misery was complete in the final minute when Sutton - making a rare start despite attempts from ourselves to sign him during the week - scored.

Awful, awful stuff after being in such a good position. We have now won just one of our last nine games, a rather worrying run of form. A big, big improvement is needed in every aspect for Tuesday's cup replay against Hamilton.