Hearts Succumb To In-Form Dons

Hearts’ seven game unbeaten run came to an end at Pittodrie yesterday when they disappointingly went down to a solitary Lee Miller goal to hand Aberdeen their fourth win on the bounce.

As mentioned in the preview I always felt this would be a tricky one for Hearts, especially after the exertions of recent weeks, and so it proved in a game that very much sounded as though the home side did deserve to win, even if Csaba Laszlo felt that his team controlled the game for long spells in the early stages. It only served to add insult to injury that it was former Hearts player Miller who was the difference between the sides – how we could do with a forward of his ability at our club right now.

Once again a Hearts match ended with the focus very much being on their players’ disciplinary record, as they received two more red cards to add to their growing collection this season when both Marius Zaliukas and Lee Wallace were given their marching orders (the latter was sent off after the final whistle) by our old ‘friend’ Iain Brines.

Having not seen either incident I cannot comment on the validity of those decisions, but regardless of that this sort of thing is not good for the club’s reputation, and only serves to make referees even more likely to dish out future heavy treatments to our players, very much in a similar way to the alleged ‘diving’ problem with the Lithuanian players at Tynecastle. It’s a shame that we seem to have now gained a reputation as a ‘physical side’ due to the laziness and ignorance of the media – most of the cards dished out to Hearts players tends to be for petulance or retaliation rather than out-and-out brutality.

So…the good run may be at an end, but the players now have the perfect opportunity to bounce back with two crucial matches against oldest rivals Hibs now on the horizon. These are games that could well make or break this season for Laszlo and his team – let’s hope that they enable it to be the former, otherwise it could be an extremely LONG few months before the summer….!