Hearts V Falkirk

Hearts take on Falkirk at Tynecastle this afternoon looking to make it four wins in a row in the SPL.

The recent run of good results has obviously been very welcome from a Hearts point of view, however the fans are under no illusions that there is much improving to be done for us to seriously start thinking about our team achieving something this season. In each of the previous matches the result has gone narrowly in Hearts’ favour, but any of those games could have gone either way.

What Csaba and his coaches should now looking for are some slightly more convincing performances in fixtures like these – perhaps a bit more like those at the beginning of the season when Hearts were regularly dominating possession. If the likes of Stewart and Driver can start playing like they did back then, and Bruno Aguiar, Christophe Berra and Christian Nade can continue their recent good form, then Hearts do have the basis of a decent side, one which can hopefully be improved in the coming weeks by the return of Mike Tullberg and potentially some decent signings in January.

Obviously we’d like to think that the good run of results can continue today when the Bairns are in town, but although we generally have a good record in this fixture at Tynecastle, it’s likely to be a tough match.

John Hughes always has his teams ultra-fired up for matches against Hearts, and generally I’ve always thought that Falkirk have seen this fixture as a derby of sorts for some reason anyway. Their fans are always right up for it and tend to travel in better numbers than most of the other sides in the league, and if this happens again today as I expect it to, then we should have a better atmosphere at Tynecastle than we do for most matches there.

As we know Larry Kingston continues to be absent for Hearts, along with longer-term injury casualties Deividas Cesnauskis and Saulius Mikoliunas. Mike Tullberg has returned to training but will still miss out on this occasion, however Eggert Jonsson has been passed fit.

For Falkirk, the match winner the last time the sides met, Scott Arfield, is doubtful with an ankle injury and former Hearts winger Neil McCann definitely misses out with a hamstring problem. Given how well he played in the last match between the sides this has to be considered a positive from our point of view.

I might be being overly optimistic here, but I think it’ll be a decent game this afternoon…..