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Some Hearts fans need a reality check !!

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I`m not normally one for ranting about things – but the attitude of some fans at Saturday`s match against St Mirren was enough to “get me going”.


The loss of a late goal in any game which denies our favourites a win is always a big disappointment. But what increasingly annoys me is how some fans` opinion of individual players and their 90-minute performances seems to be governed by the final score – basically if we haven`t won, then no-one could possibly have played well. A couple of back-to-back defeats tends to bring talk of “emptying” most of the team in the next transfer window !! A quick look at JambosKickback after a defeat shows this quite starkly.

So I am pleading for a bit more realism from fans when assessing our squad of players, and the effectiveness of manager Csaba Laszlo. Sure, we all have our favourites (and scapegoats !!). We`d probably all like to see so-and-so played in position X instead of position Y ? have 3 forwards ?.and of course, we`re all able to make better substitutions during a match than the manager.

Nothing new there. But surely there has to be more to being a football fan than just gloating over a win and moaning after a defeat ? An appreciation of recent history, and the strange economic circumstances which are now engulfing the game would go some way to developing a more balanced view of things, I think.

An important fact to be considered is that our team has suffered 2 years of awful football management, from the incompetent puppetry of Messrs Rix, Ivanauskas, Malofeev, Korabochka & Cervenkov through to the more honest inadequacy of Stephen Frail. I am impressed with Csaba Laszlo, and pleased that he seems to enjoy relative freedom and trust from Vladimir. However he has only been in charge for 8 months, with limited scope for new signings – and he has just been forced to lose his best defender. To have improved the professionalism, results and performance levels of the team to reach 3rd place in the SPL is way beyond the aspirations I had back in August.

Fans should also take a close look at the SPL table and the actual results of games not involving Hearts. Only 15 points separate 3rd from 10th. A total of 156 matches have been played so far, with almost 70% of them ending in either a draw or in a one-goal win. If you strip out matches involving the Old Firm, that percentage rises to around 80%. In other words, everyone is capable of beating everyone else, but most results are extremely close. In Hearts case, we have dominated some games which we failed to win (e.g. Dundee Utd and Hibs at Tynecastle) – and the main reason is simply our poor goal-scoring ability. The fact that we were able to dominate these games should itself be a cause for optimism rather then grumbling.

The multi-million pound teams at Celtic and Rangers (each with several 20-goals-a-season strikers) have managed to forge a whole 15 points ahead of a rehabilitating young Hearts side who don`t even have a single 10-goals-a-season striker !! That is a remarkable economic irony, and we should commend Csaba Laszlo for being able to master-mind a set of tactics which allows us to be even close to their level.

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4 comments

  • itsnomarooned says:

    Couldn’t agree more with this – it continually frustrates me that fans seem intent on focussing only on any perceived negative. Some fans are a curious breed who actually seem happier when they have something to moan about, and make things up when things are going well (we beat someone 3-0 and they harp on about how it should have been 4-0 etc). There quite clearly has been improvement this year – with largely the same group of players – so let’s concentrate on that. Yes of course there’s certainly room for further improvement but let’s give the manager and team the proper amount of time to achieve what we all hope they can.

  • MrH says:

    Agree with everything said here. The main problem though, is that you’re talking about people who don’t really ‘think’ about anything – you can’t change things as fundamental as that and just have to accept them, unfortunately. Results are everything in football, from how much money they generate to how highly players are rated as a….*cough*….result…..’fickle’ is a word often used, and not without good reason.

  • StockportJambo says:

    Expectations have been raised after the 2005/06 season, and some of Romanov’s proclamations (which were only playing to the crowd at the time). There was a sense that we achieved what we did because “we had George Burley” and “all we need is a proper manager and we’ll be right back up there”. Well, we have one, and – we are. What I’ve enjoyed most about this season is that we (despite the media trying to tell everyone different) have returned to being an honest, Scottish football club again – instead of the lies and BS that we’ve had to put up with since Burley left. If Csaba says something, I believe him… and I believe he has the capacity & authority to carry whatever it is out. Wherever we finish in the league this season, that is the biggest positive for me.

  • Dalien says:

    Well said that man. I know I moan about the team and some of its performances. But I think this year I have really sat back and enjoyed what the management team have done compared to the last couple of years. Csaba impresses in the way he deals with the press and I really feel he has a passion for the game and the club. Long may this continue. This year I have been worried by the constant media attacks slating the club for being bullies off and on the pitch. One thing that struck me at the weekend was the accurate match report on the wap mobile hearts official site. I was impressed at the way in which both teams were praised.

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