Time for an important match (Yes, we get it, everyone has made that quiet clear). Anyway, the point that seems to be cropping up is how tired St. Mirren will be for this match. Rubbish, if the St. Mirren players can’t play two 90 minute matches within two days of each other, they don’t deserve to be called athletes. Anyway, it’s St. Mirren’s fault for asking on such short notice so they could get oodles of money so there.

So, now on to the pre-match where I’m going to ignore saying that St. Mirren will be tired. More likely is that they will be buoyed up by it and will be carrying the momentum from a good win over Motherwell in the Scots Cup. If Hearts can keep on doing what they were doing against Aberdeen, it should be a good game. The 4-4-2 (or whatever twisted version of it Csaba came up with) works very well with this Hearts squad, particularly when there’s a reluctance from most Hearts players to shoot the ball. As such, Csaba should keep the same squad as last week, with the exception of Michael Stewart. Unless he’s improved in training, his reluctance to make the harder challenges when they’re needed are hurting the squad and giving the opposition more chances than they should have. Once Miko gets back, Stewart should be benched, that’s the gist of it.

One point of nervous speculation over this match is Balogh, Driver and Karipidas who were ill during the week. According to the BBC, they should be fine for the match…we’ll see. Also, Laryea Kingston is out with his injury bouncing in and out of the squad.

Here’s the predicted line-ups, courtesy of the BBC:

Hearts: Balogh, Neilson, Jonsson, Karipidis, Wallace, Obua, Stewart, Aguiar, Palazuelos, Driver, Nade, Kello, Glen, Cesnauskis, Thomson, Mrowiec, Elliot, Templeton.

St Mirren: Howard, Ross, Potter, Cuthbert, Camara, Barron, McGinn, Thomson, Murray, Dorman, Brady, Hamilton, Mehmet, Smith, Wyness, Mason, McAusland, Brighton.

On the two previous occasions, Hearts have come better off, winning 2-1 at home and 1-0 away.

My Prediction:…difficult one. Trying to come up with one that isn’t the usual “1-0″ or “2-1″…

I’m gonna stick my head above the parapet and say Hearts win 2-0. It’s nothing like the BBC’s prediction of 1-1 but I don’t think St. Mirren will have the attacking capability to break through the Hearts defence or midfield.

A slightly shortchanged Believer

Tags: Hearts, St. Mirren

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 11:51 am and is filed under Pre-Match. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.