Hearts take on SPL champions Celtic at Tynecastle in front of the TV cameras on Sunday looking to build on their recent improved form.
This fixture is generally one of the most competitive in the Scottish game and as we’ve discussed already this week, there have been a fair few crackers between the sides over the years. Celtic have the upper hand in terms of results of course, but Hearts have played pretty well against them in the last three years, especially in Edinburgh, and they should be looking ahead to Sunday quietly confident of getting a result.
I’ve lost count of the number of times that we’ve lamented on this site about how much our team has fallen from the heights that it once reached during a few golden months in 2005, but although it’s true that we no longer have a side that you’d expect to be regularly challenging for the championship, we should not forget the fact that the country’s top two sides Celtic and Rangers continue to be as poor if not poorer than they were back in ’05/’06. This means that although they’re almost certain to do better than the rest over the duration of a season, they are infinitely beatable in one-off matches, and this Sunday’s at Tynecastle is no exception.
Hearts should be boosted by the return of Andy Driver, who was sorely missed against Aberdeen last week. This should help to resolve the problem of being slightly one-paced in the final third of the field, and it will be good to see how he links up with Aguiar, Stewart and Karipidis again in the midfield area. This group of players along with Larry Kingston (who misses out this weekend) were the starting midfield at Easter Road a fortnight ago, and they turned in as good a display as I’ve seen from a Hearts engine room in quite some time. If they can do this again on Sunday then they’ll at least give themselves a chance.
Despite the fact that Hearts are still struggling to find a frontman who can score goals, the big concern for me this weekend is the defensive situation. Janos Balogh did well at Easter Road in goal but looked jittery on his home debut against Aberdeen – any signs of the former against Celtic and Hearts are in trouble, especially with the considerably less-than-solid looking back four of Berra, Zaliukas, Jonsson and Wallace likely to be in front of him. To be fair to the full-backs, both Jonsson and Wallace did better against Aberdeen and hopefully will have gained some confidence from that, but the central defensive partnership is a worry.
As for our opposition, well, they’ll obviously have their threats, none more so than Aidan McGeady, a player who has always impressed me with his great natural skills on the wing. He’ll potentially be up against young Jonsson on the right for Hearts, which actually has the makings of a pretty intriguing contest in its own right. Scott McDonald is another player who’ll need to be watched- he’s nothing particularly special but he has an uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time for Celtic, particularly in domestic matches.
As ever when one of the Old Firm are in town, if Hearts are to get a positive result then they’re likely to need a strong referee controlling things out there. The man in the middle on Sunday is Craig Thomson, and although I’m loathed to describe any of our current crop of refs as being anything resembling ‘good’, I’d probably put him in the top half of what is a pretty desperate bunch. As long as he keeps his bottle and applies the laws impartially we’ll have no complaints, but how often have we been able to say that after such a fixture!?
Hopefully it’ll be a cracker…..
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now down a player.. game is going out of reach
I don?t think the result was ever in doubt. We deserved to win. Robson was immense.
He was. It was men against boys out there today. Shocking performance from Hearts.
All I can do is shake my head, it loses it’s impact when you can’t see it.
barry robson is a good example to a lot of scottish players in that if you go to celtic or rangers & work hard @ your game you can eventually make the breakthrough
To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the game. It’s great that we won, and won convincingly which is the most important thing from our perspective. But, I always enjoy the game when Hearts are up for it. It makes it a more intriguing encounter. But having said that, I will gladly take the points and the performance. You don’t get it easy at Tynecastle like that often so we are more than receptive to it. 4 In a Row Here We Go.
Well a truly chocking performance from Hearts, toothless and uninspired. We’re lucky it was only 2-0. Men against boys is a good way to put it SJ. Miko was then only one who looked up for it, the rest including Stewart seemed close to uninterested. Embarrassing and worrying for the rest of the season.
Hearts were appalling but Celtic were very impressive – sometimes it’s difficult to tell what was more prominent than the other! See my match report for a full-scale rant…..!