‘Unpaid’ Hearts maintain 100% SPL home record

Hearts went into today`s match against Inverness at Tynecastle with the club on the receiving end of yet more sensational headlines, with some newspapers reporting that Hearts players were “furious” at not having been paid recently.

As for the game, it was sadly short on incidents. Hearts took the lead in the 7th minute when Mikoluinas ran on to a neat pass from Ksanavicius beyond the defence, forcing ICT keeper Fraser to commit himself at the edge of the box, before placing a good shot into the empty Roseburn goal.

Hearts best chance after that in the first half came from a nice Wallace chip into the box which Michael Stewart tried to flick over the advancing keeper, who just managed to tip the ball over the bar.

The second half saw Inverness spend more time in Hearts half, compared to before the interval, and Marian Kello had to deal with some crosses and goalmouth scrambles. Jamie Mole wasted a decent shooting opportunity, and Laryea Kingston fluffed a shot from a good position. Other than that there were no real scoring chances at either end, although the Hearts fans had to endure a nervous last 10 minutes – a familiar experience given how limited our goal-scoring threat is these days – and the final whistle was very welcome.

The nice passing movements from previous matches were largely missing today, and the old “punt up the field” tactic was used too much. Nade, Palazuelos and Mrowiec were all introduced from the substitutes bench in the second half – with Nade doing lots of good running and showing decent ball control. Unfortunately, Eggert Jonnson looked less than convincing to me at right-back, especially in the first-half, while Ksanavicius did virtually nothing worthwhile after he had laid on the goal. Indeed there were occasions when I started to wonder if he was actually ill, because he seemed reluctant (or unable) to put in any bursts of speed or effort when a situation clearly called for just that. He probably beat Laryea Kingston today (in my opinion) for the “laziest player” award.

By the way, I caught an interview on Talk107 at lunchtime today in which Lawrence Broadie (Hearts marketing manager) gave a more measured explanation as to why the players had not been paid Apparently funds were not in the correct account in time to be paid into the player`s accounts on the Friday. The players were told about this in advance, and assured that steps had been taken to ensure their money would be there at the start of the coming week. Broadie acknowledged the situation was regrettable, but said he know of no players who were about to revolt. Despite this, a Daily Record man on the program tried again, insisting that he knew of some Hearts players who were still due money from last season.

We can only hope that this was indeed an administrative hiccup, and that Ukio is not experiencing a long-term cashflow problem (as discussed here yesterday !!)