Why Hearts were left frustrated by elements of their performance against Ayr
Saturday’s Championship Christmas cracker between these two teams generated eight goals as Hearts prevailed 5-3 in miserable, wet, windy conditions. The Jambos are three points clear of Dunfermline in second place – with a game in hand – and have clocked up 26 goals and 21 points in just eight matches. Queen of the South were hit for six recently, as were Dundee at the start of the campaign. Only the Pars have beaten them in the league.
It shows that there is no complacency though in this Hearts team when, in the wake of the victory over the Honest Men, all the talk was about making sure opponents do not recover from going behind and placing them in a difficult situation. Stephen Kingsley put the Jambos ahead just 11 minutes in, but Ayr struck back in the second half, scoring two goals in three minutes to briefly lead 2-1. Hearts deserve credit for quickly shifting through the gears to score four goals in 21 minutes to put the game to bed, but they don’t want to let anyone off the hook again.
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Hide Ad"We're a bit frustrated with ourselves after the first half,” revealed Kingsley, who put in another excellent display at left-back. “We don't feel that we played as well as we can do. In the second half, I actually think that it got even worse in the first 15 minutes. That's how I felt on the pitch. The two goals from them gave us a kick up the bum and that made us kick into gear for the next 25 minutes.
"We blew them away in that 25 minutes and that's really what defined the game, that killed them off. But it shouldn't take 25 minutes in the second half to wake us up. Obviously I'm delighted with the win – that was the most important thing – but frustrated at the same time. Hopefully that's just a little phase and we've got it out of our system.”
Hearts could be excused for some fragility considering the emotional and physical toll put upon them after the gut-wrenching Scottish Cup final defeat by Celtic on penalties. The hurt was not going to totally dissipate just six days later, but Kingsley refused to use that as a reason for standards slipping.
"You could say that,” the 26-year-old replied if there was cup-final hangover. “It's hard to put your finger on what it was. It could be a number of things – the weather wasn't great, the wind was swirling, it was difficult to manage the conditions. No excuses – we didn't play as well as we should do. Thankfully we came good for those 25 minutes and won the game."
There is a steely determination within this Hearts squad to return to the Premiership as swiftly and emphatically as possible. They want to keep collecting wins, hungry for perfection and promotion. "It's a massive week,” added Kingsley. “We now have Tuesday [against Arbroath] and then Saturday [against Dundee] to improve on things. The Christmas period is huge for any team going for the title.”