…Not very good at all. Hearts were beaten (maybe routed ist the better word) 2-0 by little upstarts Hamilton who extend their terrific form. Hamilton were all over the JT’s for almost all of the 90 minutes knocking in two goals and making Hearts look generally silly.

If any blame is going  to put anywhere, I’d put on the defence (not that the rest of the team were really much better). First, although MacDonald is a good young goalie, he hasn’t had the regular experience that Balogh has had and it appears his experience was missed today. The back 4 will have had their issues as well. Only Neilson and Wallace have had any regular first team appearances with Zaluikas and Jonsson filling in the gaps when they appeared. Not having Berra probably hurt, and the new defensive set up will need some time to gel, but this should get better over time.

This match is probably another in a long list of arguments for changing the set up of the squad. The 4-5-1 formation allows for dominance of the midfield and quick movement of the ball up into the opposition’s area. However, we only have one experienced striker to feed the ball to and he has a tendency to hang back a bit while the whole team have a reluctance th shoot the ball. We need a new striker with two up front, possibly working with the classic 4-4-2.

Their is some minor consolation (if you like that sort of thing). Our two main contenders for the European spot both lost today: Rangers 2-o Dundee United, Falkirk 1-0 Aberdeen with Hibs only scraping a draw with Motherwell. S0, even though Hearts suffered a bad loss today, the table stays much the same as far as Hearts are concerned.

With it looking likely that the captain will be leaving for pastures new, down at Wolverhampton, Hearts are going to need to work extraordinarily hard in the next couple days to sign in a striker, and maybe a replacement for Berra. If Berra does go, Csaba apparently has someone in mind: “I have one player, a very talented player, who is an international with his country, played Champions League and UEFA Cup and is 23 years old”

Maybe we could somehow label Vlad with the blame, as he decided to show his face at the match after arriving in Edinburgh for transfer talks. Maybe he jinxed it? You decide.

The next match is in a week against Falkirk in the 5th Round of the Scottish Cup at Tynecastle. Lets hope Csaba and the gang can get it together for then.

Scorers: Mensing 11, pen 52

I was hoping that this wasn’t going to happen (can’t understand the specifics myself) but Hearts have accepted an offer of £2.3 million for the JT’s Captain Christophe Berra from Wolverhampton Wanderers.

I have two points I want to raise over this. 1st, why have Hearts accepted an offer £700,000 below the original price tag? Probably because the rumoured interest from Fulham and Sunderland was only just a rumour. It can also be discerned that Hearts (or at least Vlad Romanov) are desperate to get a decent money boost.

As such, Berra will not feature in Csaba’s squad in today’s match against Hamilton as he travelled down to Molineux this morning to watch Wolves v Watford.

Those of you who were up early enough to cath the preceding article on the Scotsman, you would know that Csaba Laszlo was apparently in the dark over Berra’s future and had tried to keep the captain at Tynecastle. This obviously means that Vlad has set his clout to stealth mode and working in the shadows in the past few months.

Now, a quick quiz. Raise your hand if you think Wolves are a bigger side than Hearts? No one? Ok, who thinks that the Championship is bigger than the SPL? Yes I know it’s “bigger” because it has more teams than the SPL but that’s not what I asked.

What this does mean is that we need a new Captain. Who’s the new skipper? My money’s on Robbie Nielson. He’s been around the longest at Tynecastle and know how things tick. Also, it will probably be Jason Thomson to take up Berra’s position in the back 4 although Csaba hinted that he had an excellent replacement in mind just in case. Whether or not he meant Thomson is another question…

Well, Goodbye Christophe Berra, you will be missed.

Well, last time we were here was Wednesday 12th November at Tynecastle and it was a poor match to say the least as Hearts squeaked by 1-0 in a game which Hearts should have been comfortable in. However, that was over two months ago and Hearts are a now a better team with great results against Rangers and Celtic and a fantastic victory over the Hibees in the Scottish Cup. Hearts are currently 4th in the table, only behind Dundee United on goal difference with 38 points and Aberdeen sitting right behind with 37.

Hamilton Academical sit in 9th with 26 points behind Kilmarnock on goal difference and 2 points behind Motherwell. The Accies, originally predicted to be knocked back down into the First Division this season, have been on a stellar run of form recently beating Kilmarnock, Inverness and Aberdeen in their last 3 SPL matches (not necessarily in that order) with 4 wins out of the last 5 and a victory in the Scottish Cup over Ross County.

The BBC reports that the line ups will be:

Hamilton Accies: Cerny, Swailes, Neil, McLaughlin, Canning, Easton, McClenahan, McArthur, Mensing, Thomas, McCarthy, Murdoch, Gibson, Akins, Lyle, McGowan, Offiong, Deuchar.

Hearts: MacDonald, Neilson, Zaliukas, Berra, Wallace, Obua, Stewart, Karipidis, Driver, Aguiar, Nade, Kello, Kingston, Glen, Thomson, Jonsson, Cesnauskis, Mrowiec.

I’m going to agree with these line-ups (I don’t know much about the Accies so I can’t comment much on them) but the Hearts line up seems about right, much the same as last weeks. It’s unlikely that Hearts are going to get Ballogh’s signature so it’s probably going to be MacDonald in goal again because it’s unlikely that Kello has learnt to kick the ball in a straight line. It’s a safe bet to assume that Csaba is going to stick with the fairly successful 4-5-1 formation with Nade up front. Although it would be good to see Kingston start again in place of Karipidis (I’m I the only one who thinks he makes TOO many mistakes in a match?) but with the team gelling, it’s probably not going to change. Marius Zaliukas has returned from suspension, but with 2 red cards from only 19 appearances (not a great ratio), it *would* be likely that he would remain sidelined after recent match conduct. However, as Eggert Jonsson is currently ill, Zaliukas will be playing alongside Berra, Neilson and Wallace (The sending off against Aberdeen was highly dubious and I don’t think it deserved a sending off. To me, it appeared to be the Aberdeen player being an idiot).

I predict it to be a much closer match than it normally would be with the final score Hearts 2 - Accies 1. I suspect that David Obua is begging to find his feet in Scottish football and will probably get one of the goals. Bruno Aguiar with the second.

In other Hearts news, Csaba Laszlo is reported to be in talks with a striker playing in Europe whom Csaba calls “interesting”. Now, we must remember that Lithuania is also in Europe, so I wouldn’t rule out another Kaunus of Ripo loan but we can always hope it isn’t. What worries me is that this player is currently in Europe and as such, may need a period to adjust to Scottish football which is exactly what we don’t need. As you all know, we need John Robertson. But seeing as he’s not available, we need someone who can start scoring the moment he steps on the pitch. Just to let you speculate wildly - a representative of Vlad’s “Ukio Bankas Investment Group” has been sent to assist in the transfer negotiations…see it as you will

(Quick question…”with” is still a word in the English language? My word processor seems to have forgotten it exists)

My heart goes out to Dundee United after last nights agonising defeat in penalties to Celtic in the Wee-Diddy Cup Semi-Final. I didn’t watch the game, but reading the headlines from the Scotsman and BBC was enough for me to be shocked. Reading on, I discovered that it was a pretty even first half and the second half mostly went Dundee’s way. From what I can gather, Dundee played an extraordinary game against the Infirm side and was simply unlucky on the Penalty spot. With this in mind, I was a not at all surprised to find the little ginger man in the green jumpsuit Gordon Strachan claim: “I really thought we were terrific and I think the games should have been finished before the shoot-out.” This now means that there will be an all Old-Firm final for the Wee-Diddy Cup and all of us who have a brain function greater than a baked potato must shake our heads and sigh as the rest of Scotland goes unrepresented in another Cup Final (thumbs up to Queen of the South for last years Cup Final performance). Anyway, that’s my Old Firm rant out of the way for now.

Brain Function Higher Than a Baked Potato? That is for you to decide...

Anyway, the second point of this post is about the Daily Record. I was having a quick glance at their football section online (Who’s stupid idea was it not to put the Football section under “Sport”?) and I noticed they had printed a similar article to that in the Scotsman over Christophe Berra and the transfer Rumours. The Scotsman article stated that Berra was happy at Hearts but would eventually like to play in a better league. Understandable, who wouldn’t? (Well, me, but that’s besides the point). The Daily Record on the other hand stated that Berra needed to quit Hearts if he wanted to save his career….ummm, hang on a minute….those are two different articles, clearly someone isn’t telling the truth and I’m going to have to guess that it’s the Daily Record. So I must now condemn them to the sin bin and declare their version of the story to be worth the same as the best journalism that America can come up with: Worthless.

Edit: Gordon Strachan has been promoted from “Baked Potato” to “Stick of Celery” after his comments on the BBC Sport website over the English Premier League’s wage budget. He believes (and I’m forced to agree) that when given the choice between SPL and Premier League, Players will choose to play south of the border every time.

The full article can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/c/celtic/7857428.stm

Turns out Vlad has still been using his clout, but the Russian has been in stealth mode for the past few months. Apparently Hearts (well…Vlad,) have been slicing and dicing the wage budget quietly getting rid of useless players (I’m not arguing with this one actually, there are a few players who are taking up space).

The Scotsman printed figures showing that in the past couple of years, Heart’s player wages have seriously outstripped the clubs turnover by a couple of million £’s which may explain why there were two moments when Hearts players weren’t payed…perhaps…I hope not…Anyway, the Scotsman has given us a clue as to what Vlad’s plans for the future. Apparently, the only person that can authorise transfers and loans of players in or out is our very own Tsar Vlad, not Laszlo as we (or at least I) was led to believe. This may explain why the only price-tags created in the Hearts squad are those who have a bright future: Berra and Driver to name but two. With this in mind, we can see where Vlad is going with Hearts. He intends to bring in and improve young players from across Britain and from Riccarton, give them a good dose of First Team experience and sell them off to the highest bidder a few years later.

We can only hope this is one step in some grand scheme to make Hearts a great team, by eliminating the debt the best way Hearts can. The way Vlad acted in his first couple of years as Tsar of Tynecastle suggests he does care a little bit for the Gorgie outfit, I mean if he didn’t care or if he was willing to let the club fall apart, he wouldn’t have hired Csaba Laszlo or he might have kept up the insanity of last season.

So, we might have to wait a few years to see where this devious little scheme is going and we can only hope that Heart of Midlothian isn’t another one of Vlad’s money making schemes such as bootleg Beatles LP’s or the K-19 Nuclear Submarine…maybe some of the radiation has gotten to him.