KILMARNOCK supporters were never likely to go quietly on Saturday.
Not when their side was having so much fun with Paul Heffernan scoring a hat trick to add a flourish to a result which has come to seem like a matter of routine.
Kilmarnock have now won on each of their last five visits to Tynecastle and the latest left fans feeling bold enough to goad Hearts openly about wanting a return to play them there every week. Such chanting will have stung but the home support will know that they might soon be out of earshot.
The clubs occupy different halves of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League table, with defeat on Saturday leaving Hearts six points outside the top six. Attempting to bridge such a gap might not seem futile yet – the Edinburgh side are still to play eight fixtures before the league splits – but aspects of their performance against Kilmarnock suggested that the resources of this Hearts squad might not stretch far enough.
Goals would seem in particularly short supply with the Tynecastle side just once able to muster three goals in one league game and only Dundee have scored fewer in the top flight so far this season.
That Heffernan managed it so effortlessly on Saturday will have felt discomfiting, then. Each of his stabbed finishes offered a pointed reminder of what Hearts are missing in attack; the injury to Callum Paterson and unpopularity of John Sutton meaning the club have rested their faith on the angular frame of Michael Ngoo, a forward who never quite seems in full control of his limbs but one who has nonetheless scored three times since joining on loan from Liverpool. The Englishman poses an awkward, physical threat but he lacks the refined menace of Heffernan. "Even when he is not in a good mood, he can score goals for fun. When he is like that he is as good as [Celtic's Gary] Hooper," said William Gros, the Kilmarnock forward.
Such a comment will jar when taken out of the context of this win – Hooper has scored 22 times this season, after all – and Heffernan's scoring prowess is perhaps better appreciated by first looking at the league table since Kilmarnock occupy fifth place by virtue of goal difference. Even so, the Ayrshire club has tread softly on the way up the table after a three-match unbeaten run and Kenny Shiels has so far tip-toed around the prospect of securing a top-half finish this season.
The Kilmarnock manager cannot be accused of lacking faith in his players and against Hearts he was afforded the relative luxury of fielding a starting XI among which only two – Ross Barbour and Gros – might not have considered themselves to be first-choice senior players last season. The strength of the Rugby Park squad is perhaps understated then, but Shiels was deliberately enthusiastic about what he had seen in such a young Hearts side. Callum Tapping and Billy King, in particular, might have been singled out for praise had he been pressed further.
Hearts were upset by the head injury suffered by Darren Barr early on but their young midfielders stole back the attention by creating a number of attractive patterns of play, even if they would unravel in the final third. "There are a lot of young boys in the team and we are going to learn something every week because we are playing in the top flight of Scottish football," said King. "We are not making the same mistakes twice. We need to put this behind us now."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article