'Let's tell it how it is' - Robert Snodgrass in frank Hearts admission and Euro message for team-mates

Robert Snodgrass revealed he doesn’t know what Hearts side is going to turn up at the moment and admitted they have “not found a way to fix it”.

The Capital club are doing their best to provide a modern-day twist on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Worryingly, the latter has been far more prominent. In Motherwell, in Aberdeen and, on Saturday, in Kilmarnock. Snodgrass was in no mood to sugarcoat the 2-1 defeat to the relegation battlers who played with ten men for 37 minutes.

"Let's tell it how it is,” he said. “We've not been good enough. It's as simple as that. It's not for me to sit here and give you all the answers, I'm telling you what's happening. I'm being honest. For any successful team you need to have a togetherness and a never-say-die attitude and a willingness to go win when you are not playing well. We will all sit here and put our hands up because we are an honest bunch of lads and say it's not good enough, the fans don't deserve that, they travel in large numbers.

"We've been playing that deep-lying midfielder, we're nice, we're trying to play. Teams are going to identify that, they do put pressure on you, they get higher up. It's trusting that process. It's a different approach sometimes. You can mix it up, play in behind, win your individual battles. Right now, we're not doing that. It's as simple as that. We're not doing that. If you want to win football matches, you need to win your individual battles. You need to give 110 per cent.”

‘What Hearts is going to finish the season?’

Something Snodgrass can’t quite put his finger on is the hunger and desire to win games. It appeared Killie had a far bigger appetite.

“I don't know why [that’s the case] when we are going for third position,” he said. “We're going for a chance to get this great football club into Europe consistently. That's the disappointing thing. It's been creeping in the last few weeks and we've just not found a way to fix it at the minute. It's not been great. Not been great at all. I think we have to be honest, we don't know what Hearts is turning up at the minute. We take that full responsibility, I take full responsibility. I am one of the older players in the team but you need to roll your sleeves up and be right by each other's side, digging in and working hard to make it better. We've had some great results this year and I've seen enough since I've been here that there is a lot of quality. We need to really challenge each other to finish third place. There are eight games left, what Hearts is going to finish the season? It is up to us.

“I've said to the lads many times, my career is at the very end, they've got their full career ahead of them. They've got a chance to get European football and play against some of the elite. You want to try to judge characters, judge lads and see who really wants it. When you are playing at the higher level, that pressure, that's what separates us from the lads who, no disrespect, never made it.”