This is Tynecastle

A month is a long time in the life of a Hearts supporter but November is one I'd gladly repeat. It's a strange feeling this hopeful optimism thing, and it had been missing for far too long. There have been ups and downs, but for once, it's a joy to be able to look back on a whole 4 weeks without shuddering in dismay or having rueful regrets over missed chances and opportunities or disasters of Lithuanian origin. So while I might live to regret unleashing this positivity upon a blog which will still be here to ponder over should it all go belly up in weeks to come, I'm going to do it anyway. I want to remember this feeling.

5 wins on the trot - what about that? We know that the media had us written off earlier in the season but I'd be surprised if there were even many amongst the Gorgie faithful who truly believed that this team could take us anywhere of note. Yet they have, and if third position is the best we can do this season it'll be a whole three places higher than my original hopes for 2008-09. There's still a long way to go before we'll know if European nights are coming to Tynecastle but simply being in a position to consider it a real possibility is something that would have generated laughter only 3 months ago.

That fragmented squad, so sparse in quality and consistency hasn't just been rejuvenated under Csaba Laszlo, it has been altered beyond recognition. Bringing on the more talented players such as Berra and Driver is an achievement, but it's not really half as impressive as the incredible change in Nade, the improvements that we have witnessed in Wallace, Zaliukas or Jonsson or the renaissance of both Karipidis and Aguiar. Csaba isn't solely responsible for their individual talents, but he is certainly due some credit for taking this mish mash squad of under-confident players and slotting them together in such a way that they are beginning to look remarkably like a good team. I might sound like I'm grateful now, but I'll really be waxing lyrical if he also manages to sort out Kingston's attitude, Stewart's temper and Miko's inconsistencies....

I don't want to ruin the mood of this blog entry so I'm not going to give screen time to the difficulties we encountered in some of these narrow wins. One goal more than your opponent is all that you need, and for as long as it brings us 3 points, I won't have any complaints about the manner of our victories. More importantly, our most recent win was jam packed full of enough spirit, skill, aggression, determination and intelligence to justify a very long list of superlatives and it was this display which brings me on to the whole point of this entry - Tynecastle.

God I love that stadium. I can confidently state that there is no place on this earth that I would rather have been than that rickety old stand on Saturday afternoon at 14:15 (+ remarkably generous additional time). When the first goal went in the place rocked, when Larry poked home the second it erupted, and when the final whistle went, Tynecastle roared so loudly they probably heard us in Leith. It took the breath away. After months of lacklustre performances from both the team and the support, it was a special moment and one which I hope goes some way to reminding these players just how incredibly proud they should be to wear that strip. If there was a man out there in maroon who didn't feel on top of the world after experiencing that, I don't care who he is, he's not cut out for Heart of Midlothian.

I could go back through this whole entry and temper the optimism with some stark facts and less inspiring realities, but I'm not going to. Even if things aren't quite so much fun in the coming weeks, for now I'm just happy to enjoy this feeling. Today, being a Jambo is great.

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No flair please - we're Jambos

I'm almost scared to say it. What if the simple act of typing the words is enough to put you straight into the bad books of the wickedly fickle gods of football? Imaginary entities they may well be, but given the turnaround in fortunes for Hearts of late, the whims of ancient spirits may well be one of the more believable explanations for the current run of results...

October wasn't really the most enjoyable of months for the average Jambo and while two draws and one loss may seem reasonable enough for a club which finished in the lower echelons of the SPL last season, it was the complete and utter lack of anything approximating competence in the art of football which had the fans rushing to the exits. Please don't misunderstand me, it's not as if many of us really believed that the SPL's 3rd highest paid squad was actually the third most talented, but when the worst of the deadwood was chopped away around the time of Csaba's arrival in Gorgie this summer, perhaps we thought we'd already seen the players at their very worst. We were effectively left with a patchwork quilt of a squad comprising a handful of talented types such as Kingston, Berra or Driver, and the remaining maroon jerseys were filled with players who might not be huge stars but seemed adequate for the task in hand. At the start of the season, they put in some decent workhorse-esque performances and we had a few pleasing results. Things were looking slightly rosier in the Gorgie garden.

But then we went to Tannadice on 27th September and all of a sudden, our modestly competent workhorses were found to be lame, Andy Driver picked up an injury, Larry Kingston started preparing for winter hibernation and poor old Berra was left to try and shore up a team who seemed to be about as 'together' as quicksand in a string vest. The result wasn't just the crap football on show, it was an attitude which manifested itself much more deeply in the players and later, also in the fans. The players were slow, disjointed, apathetic, spiritless and uncoordinated; and the fans were all of these things plus a few extra ailments in the form of frustration, anger, fear and despair.

Dundee Utd humped us 3-0 that day and a week later, Kilmarnock compounded our misery by beating us 2-1. The fans were not feeling supremely confident as the derby approached and the nervous anxiety was only slightly alleviated by the news that Hibs form had also started to slip. So derby day arrived and to cut a long story short, both sides put in typically frenzied derby-esque performances which might not have been the most skilful displays of football but inspired the Jambos to believe that the slump in form may have been a temporary glitch and that better days were on the horizon. But then we made extremely hard work of holding a struggling Aberdeen to a draw before promptly falling apart again a week later and losing to Celtic in a game that might well have ended up with a more embarassing score than 2-0 had their players not been suffering from Champions League lethargy.

So amidst rumours that the club was on the verge of hurtling head first into the administration abyss (again), the Jambos were busy contemplating what appeared to be a very long season ahead. But then it all became a little bit weird and in only 7 days, Hearts have picked up 12 points from 3 wins on the trot. Admittedly, these fixtures all featured teams languishing in the lower half of the SPL and could well have relied partly upon occasional bits of luck but there 's no doubting that a remarkable and pleasant change has occurred. The players might not have morphed overnight into budding Ronaldos or Messi's, but there's no mistaking the emergence of a new, gritty, tenacious and motivated approach. They seem stronger and more robust, and I don't know if the jaffa cake technique is back in use but they're definitely looking like they have bags more energy than they did last month.

This team have managed to dig out three 1-0 wins in the space of only 7 days and while the football itself might still be a bit crap, there's a real sense of dogged determination amongst the players which, if nutured, may well end up being the reason behind us doing not too badly at all this season. Admittedly, the 10 non-OF teams are fairly closely packed together on the current league board but with the exception of perhaps Dundee United, none of them look like teams we shouldn't be able to handle comfortably. As Csaba so eloquently explained:
"You cannot win ugly or pretty, you can win and if you win, you are always beautiful."

Wise words indeed and while the longevity of this change in attitude remains to be seen, I would certainly be more than happy to sacrifice pretty football if it means picking up 3 points on a regular basis. We're currently working with a very young team and if we happen to land that lucrative European spot, we can then maybe give more attention to the aesthetics of the football that they're churning out, but in the meantime I'm happy to stick with ugly. Jambos don't do flair anyway.

Are we expecting too much, too soon?

It's probably never a good idea to kick off a blog with a moaning session but it's impossible to avoid one after watching Hearts wither like chocolate in an oven on Sunday when they turned out against Celtic. There's no denying that as football fans, we've been through the mill in recent months (or years) and the appointment of Csaba Laszlo appeared to inject the club, players and to a certain extent the supporters with a renewed sense of vigour. Progress has been made since the beginning of the current season and improvements are visible across the board, from the club's communication with the fans right down to the squad's team spirit, and to our surprise, we've even seen the press writing some vaguely nice things about us of late. Add a cracker of a derby against Hibs and a courageous performance against the Dons to that mix and you can maybe see why, for a moment, we were thinking things might be on the mend down Gorgie way.

But then we played Celtic.

I was full of positivity and superstitiously concealed hope before the game. I cast my eye over the news in the days leading up to the match and noted that a few of their key players were injured and bolstered this little seed of confidence with the fact that their recent performances in the SPL have been a little less than brilliant. I made my way to Tynecastle on Sunday with a spring in my step, convinced that even if we didn't take 3 points, we were sure to give them a game. I was oh so wrong.

From kick off, we seemed lethargic and disorganised. Our defence which had held so well against Aberdeen the previous week looked fragile and disorientated, our midfield which had controlled the previous few SPL encounters with such confidence was disjointed and sloppy and our lone striker was very, very alone. I'll exclude Janos Balogh from any criticism given that was rarely troubled by Celtic, couldn't have done anything about Maloney's goal and Caldwell's second was the result of scrappy antics at the goalmouth which should perhaps have been ruled out anyway, but most of the outfield players just didn't seem to have turned up at all.

Our lynchpin players such as Stewart, Driver, Berra and more recently added to this list, Bruno Aguiar, all seemed to choose the same date for their 'off day' and most were anonymous throughout. We perhaps only have inconsistent refereeing to thank for the fact that Mikey managed to stay on the pitch for the whole 90 minutes given that his discipline appeared to disintegrate as the match went on and his frustrations started to bubble over into his attempts to win the ball back from a greedy, ball-hogging Celtic. However, I was just glad to see that at least one of our boys in maroon hadn't completely given up so I won't slate him for that. The only other individual worth a mention would be Christian Nade who continues to look more like the striker we thought we had bought all those months ago. He harried, nipped, bustled and at times, seemed like the only Hearts player capable of controlling a football or making an accurate pass. Gold star for him, and I look forward to seeing his continued improvement in the coming weeks. So, yes...it wasn't the most enjoyable 90 minutes I've ever spent in Tynecastle and the only reason I really managed to stay for the duration was the knowledge that it probably really couldn't get any worse.

Post-match comments from Csaba were a little odd, given that he seemed reluctant to direct any sort of criticism at the players but I'm working on the assumption that his aim here was probably damage limitation of some description, given that his comments on the club website since then have been rather less kind. Understandably, Jambos everywhere will be gutted at the result, but reactions to the team's performance are likely to be borne of a much more deeply held concern that some of this current crop just are not good enough. It has to be said that we're weaker in some positions than others, I'm hoping to see the defence bolstered by new recruits in January and regardless of how Tullberg does when he recovers from injury, I still want to see reinforcements brought in there too. But other than that, I'm quite prepared to treat last Sunday as a glitch if we can get back to the kind of performances we witnessed in the weeks prior to that. Improvements are visible and progress has been made, so maybe we need to be a little restrained and try not to expect too much too soon. By Christmas, we'll know whether or not we really do have a renewed sense of direction or whether this is the shape of things to come. Seatbelts on, it's looking like it might be a bumpy ride.