Guess The Crowd Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 I guess the most important season now is the next one, but during the boring close season, I though a wee look back at the last 2 seasons might be interesting The Defining Sequences of Games From 8th Dec 07 to 2nd Jan 08, Hearts lost 6 straight games in 25 days. From 8th Nov 08 to 29th Nov 08, Hearts won 5 straight games in 22 days. Just as those 6 defeats defined 07/08, so the 5 wins defined 08/09, and if we remove these sequences from the equation Hearts actually got more points (I?m talking pre-split here, and it?s wrong to compare the last 5 games when the opposition is so different) in the earlier season (42 from 27 games) than in the latter (39 points from 28 games). My opinion is that, before and after that horrendous run over Christmas 07, Hearts actually weren?t as bad as was made out during that season. In fact, they were occasionally rather good ? did the 08/09 team ever play as well, for example, as in the 4-2 victory over Rangers and the 4-1 win over Aberdeen (perhaps only in the recent post-split 3-0 win over Dundee Utd). The Emergence of a team But my main reason for defending the 07/08 season is that the core of a pretty decent team emerged that season; Jonsson and Palazuelos were new to the team, Wallace and Driver played more often than they?d done before, Berra equaled his 35 appearances from the previous season. All these players formed the core of what was really a pretty young team, and this really formed the basis of the 08/09 team. (In a similar way, the core of the 85/86 team was formed during 84/85 which seemed a horrendous season at the time, but a lot better with a bit of retrospective reappraisal.) The closeness in quality outwith the OF On the face of it, Hearts improved from 8th to 3rd in 08/09, but in reality was there that much of a difference in quality between 3rd and 7th in 08/09, or for that matter between 3rd and 8th in 07/08? To illustrate this, Aberdeen pipped Hearts only on goal difference to get into the top 6, helped by 17 home games and 16 aways, while Hearts were the other way round. Aberdeen, who went on to play 20 home games and 18 aways that season, actually achieved 4th place (and if memory serves may even have snatched 3rd but for a bad decision in the game against Motherwell). Yet were Aberdeen really any better than Hearts that season? Summary None of this is to detract from Csaba, who I like as much as the next man, I just felt that we possibly rode our luck in the most recent season compared to the one before. As a final thought, we had the excellent Aguiar available for two thirds of the season last time out ? a luxury completely denied our various managers in 07/08?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heartsfc_fan Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 We came 8th! It was bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Gosling Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 We'd have been fighting relegation without Velicka. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2NaFish Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 it was a dreadful season Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RossHMFC93 Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 Every Season we finish behind the hobos is a bad one. But that's in the past and we can look forward to the Europa League and next Season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victorian Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 yes it was a bit bad. fairly torturous in fact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I.J Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 It was utterly abysmal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 Since I've been going to games in 1991, it was the most depressing season I've experienced. At times we looked as though there was no way that things would change behind the scenes and we'd be stuck with no direction for years to come. That was the worst part of it. We had Chervenkov, Korobotchka and Malofeev around at various times, plus Frail whining every week about having to pay a mortgage. We had Beniusis and Ksanavicius, which makes me embarassed just thinking about them. And we can't forget Kurskis, the pub goalkeeper and that one match against Inverness when he was sent off was summed everything up about the club at the time. But to be honest there was a lot of other incidents which could have summed it up as well. We did have a few highs, the games you mentioned plus the 2-0 CIS Cup win at Celtic but overall it was not good. Despite the fact we've maybe scraped a few of our wins this season, it's just the level of commitment from people at the club to do things the right way now. Regardless of results, that's all you can ask from your club. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeeGee Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Sexington Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 It was ****ing horrible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craigieboy Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 It was awful. The worst in a long time. Toward the end of the season I was utterly disillusioned as to where we were heading. Going to games was just terrible. This season, I celebrated every win like we had won something. It was such a change to be going to games & enjoying them & generally getting the point/points. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smoked-Glass Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 bad season there were only 5 games i'd want to see again. .beat huns 4-2 .beat tims 2-0 at darkhead league cup .Beat hibs 1-0 at tyne .Last min pen v tims at tyne 1-1 .And the 1-1 draw at easter road was alright but only just alright. We finished bottom 6 where before that we were the only team that hadn't been in the bottom 6 since it started apart from old firm. bad .1st game of the season lose to hibs at tyne . Lose 5-0 away to tims . lose 4-0 at home to huns . draw twice and lose once to gretna . hibs finish above us in the league and get top 6. a season to forget! even 2000-01 was better than that and it included 6-2 humping off hibs and not beating them at all. Plus getting nowt off the old firm but a 6-1 thrashing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neave Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 We were second bottom for a few weeks, above only Gretna. I still believe that if it was a better team than Gretna at the bottom we would eventually have been overtaken by them and found ourselves deep in the ****. If that team hit bottom they were staying there, IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redm Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 The results were bad as a standalone issue but what made it all worse was the silence and the uncertainty about the club. Everyone connected with the club just seemed utterly miserable and anxious...and match days were so difficult sometimes with the players and supporters feeding off each others' nerves and lack of confidence. Unhappiness permeated everything. It wasn't just the results. It was everything. The results didn't help, mind you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4marsbars Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 What the OP seems to be saying is that if we ignore six defeats in season A, and ignore five wins in season B, then it turns out that season A was not so bad after all. Well, yes, but the point is that we did have these results so why ignore them? December 2007 was about the worst I can remember in the post-1983 era, although autumn of 2006 (Riccarton three, league cup game at Easter Road) was also a bit dismal and depressing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nelly Terraces Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 It was pish. What a pointless thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Only a Game Posted May 31, 2009 Share Posted May 31, 2009 We frequently lost at home to teams we shouldnt be have been seeing in our way with the money we were spending and the players we had. We had two excuses for managers and a squad of players who were stealing money on a weekly basis. 2007/08 best forgotten. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie-Brown Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Obviously the season as a whole is best forgotten but 2 notable victories for the record books was our biggest League victory over Rangers in 70 years and our first away cup victory at Celtic in 50 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geoff Kilpatrick Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 The worst constructed argument ever to go with the worst season since 1998-99. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guess The Crowd Posted June 1, 2009 Author Share Posted June 1, 2009 We'd have been fighting relegation without Velicka. I agree with that. By the same token, do you agree with me that we'd have come at least 4th if he hadn't been sold in March 08? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgiewave Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Obviously the season as a whole is best forgotten but 2 notable victories for the record books was our biggest League victory over Rangers in 70 years and our first away cup victory at Celtic in 50 years. Eh? I don't know when we had previously scored 4, but we beat them 0-3 in 1995 (or was it '96?). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4marsbars Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 The worst constructed argument ever to go with the worst season since 1998-99. Surely it was worse than 98-99, which had a fantastic ending. We were 8th last year and 6th in 98-99. For some reason London Hearts have us as finishing 7th last year. http://www.londonhearts.com/scores/sea/seasonasc.html According to the same stats, the last time we finished lower than 8th was 1983 (when we were in the 1st division). And arguably that was a better season than last year because at least we were on the up. So, I'd reckon that last year was our worst since 1981-82 when we failed to get promoted from the 1st division, and the previous year we had finished 10th in the Premier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jammy T Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Our football over the last 3 seasons on the whole has been "distinctly average" 3 seasons ago we were 4th but with the talent we still had we endured god awful football for large chunks of the season. This was at the height of Vlad's lunacy and we suffered the Malofeev era after king puppet was job switched 2 seasons ago we were 8th and played a lot of similarly gash football to the season before. Most of our talent had gone however so we didnt manage to bluff our way through results quite as well, and we suffered the Cervenkov slump in form in the 8 weeks to new year - we carried a hell of a lot of dross from Kaunas that season. Frail improved the results after new year but we still played really gash football This last season we played a lot of gash but there were many "green shoots" on show. Results is the obvious one. Player improvement - both in attitude, motivation and technique/tactics. There were also occasional outbreaks of skilled football. But the margins were very slim and we could just as easily have been 6th as 3rd. If somebody next season can score around the 15 goal mark (whether this be a striker or midfielder) we have a great chance of retaining 3rd. Our defence should remain solid enough. Still a good turnaround and a good signal to Vlad what can happen if you leave a competent manager alone and allow him, by and large, to be the man in respect of the footballing side of the club At the end of the day Vlad has put us into debt to a huge amount since he arrived and we are only entering our second season of European football. On the whole the football we have been served up has been a shockingly poor return on money spent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7628mm Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 It was pish. What a pointless thread. I concur Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coco Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Our defence should remain solid enough. Agree with much of what you say. However, on the point above I am not sure that there is any evidence for that. Three of our 4 best defenders (3 first choice players) have now left the club. We have rotated the goalkeeper position all season and have no clear No 1. At present the defence would appear to shape up Thomson-Jonsson-Zaliukas-Wallace That is not a patch on Neilson-Karipidis-Berra-Wallace Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buffalo Bill Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 The three home defeats over Chritsmas; Motherwell, ICT and St Mirren were the low points for me. I got absolutely feckin soaked after the Well game, we lost inthe last minute to ICT and I left the St Mirren game with about five to go. By leaving with five minutes to go saved me the usual ten minutes queuing to get down the steps and about the same saving standing at the bar. It also saved me five minutes watching the worst dross imaginable. You know sometimes when you leave early hoping to hear one more cheer from the crowd? Well I didn't want Hearts to score against St Mirren after I left. Had we scored, the call would've went back to Vlad "Oh yes, Mr President - the boys snatched a draw thanks to your tactics". If I was going to suffer then so should've Vlad, Korobotchka and that other guy, Angel. Five minutes back in the pub and we were standing having a laugh because the football had gone beyond a joke. There was no point in worrying about it anymore because we were such a farce of a team. I'm not sure how to feel about that now. So 07/08, barring a couple of results here and there was pretty grim, yes. I missed out on 80/81 which was probably the nadir of the club's history. I saw 81/82 and although we failed to gain promotion, the seeds of recovery were sown and I was loving the new experience anyway. 98/99 was shocking but at least we recovered in great style, unlike the way 07/08 panned out pathetically. Therefore, I conclude that in all the time I've supported Hearts, 07/08 sucked the sweat off a dead man's balls. Buffalo Bill . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jammy T Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Agree with much of what you say. However, on the point above I am not sure that there is any evidence for that. Three of our 4 best defenders (3 first choice players) have now left the club. We have rotated the goalkeeper position all season and have no clear No 1. At present the defence would appear to shape up Thomson-Jonsson-Zaliukas-Wallace That is not a patch on Neilson-Karipidis-Berra-Wallace You might very well be right I am just presuming we will continue with our suffocating style of football. I think we've seen how Csaba will set up game on game and cant see it changing. But yes, on the face of it our defence will be weaker next season - maybe as a consequence our midfield will be more defensive? Mind you Jonsson already looks a better CB than Zaliukas so if Csaba gets a new centre back he appears to want this should help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mundojambo Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 i sort of agree with the OP, but results were not the reason we were so disappointed last season. as others have said it was the uncertainty surrounding the club, and i think having the depressing finish in the bottom 6 as our last memory contibutes to the ill feeling about this particular season. it wasn't THAT bad when you analyse it, but we played disjointed, unimaginative football, the club was being mismanaged and it seemed there was no way out. now we have a manager, a decent one at that, and who knows what will happen now. christ, they don't make it easy being a hearts fan, do they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topcat Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 My opinion is that, before and after that horrendous run over Christmas 07, Hearts actually weren?t as bad as was made out during that season. "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jammy T Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" :clap: nice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djh83 Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 I guess the most important season now is the next one, but during the boring close season, I though a wee look back at the last 2 seasons might be interesting The Defining Sequences of Games From 8th Dec 07 to 2nd Jan 08, Hearts lost 6 straight games in 25 days. From 8th Nov 08 to 29th Nov 08, Hearts won 5 straight games in 22 days. Just as those 6 defeats defined 07/08, so the 5 wins defined 08/09, and if we remove these sequences from the equation Hearts actually got more points (I?m talking pre-split here, and it?s wrong to compare the last 5 games when the opposition is so different) in the earlier season (42 from 27 games) than in the latter (39 points from 28 games). My opinion is that, before and after that horrendous run over Christmas 07, Hearts actually weren?t as bad as was made out during that season. In fact, they were occasionally rather good ? did the 08/09 team ever play as well, for example, as in the 4-2 victory over Rangers and the 4-1 win over Aberdeen (perhaps only in the recent post-split 3-0 win over Dundee Utd). The Emergence of a team But my main reason for defending the 07/08 season is that the core of a pretty decent team emerged that season; Jonsson and Palazuelos were new to the team, Wallace and Driver played more often than they?d done before, Berra equaled his 35 appearances from the previous season. All these players formed the core of what was really a pretty young team, and this really formed the basis of the 08/09 team. (In a similar way, the core of the 85/86 team was formed during 84/85 which seemed a horrendous season at the time, but a lot better with a bit of retrospective reappraisal.) The closeness in quality outwith the OF On the face of it, Hearts improved from 8th to 3rd in 08/09, but in reality was there that much of a difference in quality between 3rd and 7th in 08/09, or for that matter between 3rd and 8th in 07/08? To illustrate this, Aberdeen pipped Hearts only on goal difference to get into the top 6, helped by 17 home games and 16 aways, while Hearts were the other way round. Aberdeen, who went on to play 20 home games and 18 aways that season, actually achieved 4th place (and if memory serves may even have snatched 3rd but for a bad decision in the game against Motherwell). Yet were Aberdeen really any better than Hearts that season? Summary None of this is to detract from Csaba, who I like as much as the next man, I just felt that we possibly rode our luck in the most recent season compared to the one before. As a final thought, we had the excellent Aguiar available for two thirds of the season last time out ? a luxury completely denied our various managers in 07/08?? Stupid stupid pointless thread. 07/08 was the worst season in recent memory. A season of misery for me in footballing terms. What's the point in saying 'if we hadnt lost all those games we wouldnt have been so gash'?? we DID lose all those games and that's why the season was *****. urgh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie-Brown Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Eh? I don't know when we had previously scored 4, but we beat them 0-3 in 1995 (or was it '96?). Biggest wins are counted by goals scored not winning margin so a 5-3 is a bigger win than a 3-0 .... at least according to London Hearts anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leginten Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Kurskis picked. Then picked again. Then picked again. It was low comedy. The posters above are right - it was so bad that eventually it wasn't even worth getting angry about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlo2 Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 My opinion is that, before and after that horrendous run over Christmas 07, Hearts actually weren’t as bad as was made out during that season. In fact, they were occasionally rather good – did the 08/09 team ever play as well, for example, as in the 4-2 victory over Rangers and the 4-1 win over Aberdeen (perhaps only in the recent post-split 3-0 win over Dundee Utd). On the basis of that logic Hibs should have been PL champions in 1997-98. They were top of the League in September and but for the disastrous run from October to May wiould have stayed there instead of getting relegated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The People's Chimp Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 It was appalling. Horrific. Sickening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 It was appalling. Horrific. Sickening. Indeed. A sense of apathy towards Hearts which I'd never felt before, or have since, washed over me. Still, I can look back at those afternoons in the pub with Jeff & Co on the telly with a sort of perverse warmth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diego10 Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Yes, yes it was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckauskas Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 07/08 was an absolute shocker. Definately the worst season I'd spent watching Hearts. Although, it did make the successes of this campaign all the better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guess The Crowd Posted June 1, 2009 Author Share Posted June 1, 2009 The three home defeats over Chritsmas; Motherwell, ICT and St Mirren were the low points for me. I got absolutely feckin soaked after the Well game, we lost inthe last minute to ICT and I left the St Mirren game with about five to go. By leaving with five minutes to go saved me the usual ten minutes queuing to get down the steps and about the same saving standing at the bar. It also saved me five minutes watching the worst dross imaginable. You know sometimes when you leave early hoping to hear one more cheer from the crowd? Well I didn't want Hearts to score against St Mirren after I left. Had we scored, the call would've went back to Vlad "Oh yes, Mr President - the boys snatched a draw thanks to your tactics". If I was going to suffer then so should've Vlad, Korobotchka and that other guy, Angel. Five minutes back in the pub and we were standing having a laugh because the football had gone beyond a joke. There was no point in worrying about it anymore because we were such a farce of a team. I'm not sure how to feel about that now. So 07/08, barring a couple of results here and there was pretty grim, yes. I missed out on 80/81 which was probably the nadir of the club's history. I saw 81/82 and although we failed to gain promotion, the seeds of recovery were sown and I was loving the new experience anyway. 98/99 was shocking but at least we recovered in great style, unlike the way 07/08 panned out pathetically. Therefore, I conclude that in all the time I've supported Hearts, 07/08 sucked the sweat off a dead man's balls. Buffalo Bill . A fair summing up, and thanks for not calling my thread 'stupid' or 'pointless' or resorting to abusive one-line put-downs as so many others have done. For the record, I too was pretty depressed at the end of 07/08, and especially during that truly horrendous run of 6 straight defeats in December 07 (which is why I menioned it in the OP). For that matter, I also haven't forgotten the utterly catastrophic opening day defeat against Hibs. I was just trying to say that in between times, results weren't really that bad. In particular, around October/November 07, I'm sure quite a few on here, yourself included, were making some reasonably positive noises about the team's progress.(Unfortunately this board only goes back to January 08 so I can't prove it!). I still also believe (and nobody's commented on this) that some very decent players established themselves in the team that season, and this in turn helped the far more enjoyable 08/09 campaign. I wasn't even trying to be controversial, just stir some close-season debate (think I've probably been scared off though). Nice closing sentence, by the way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Gosling Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 On the plus side, we were so bad that even VR admitted he couldn't manage a football team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToadKiller Dog Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 07/08 was torture for most of the time ,the only highlight was the firt odd sign of some decent young players popping up ,But maybe it was a slump that was needed to as aid give Romanov and co a good shake . Kickback this time last year was a chuckle also ,the mega mcghee thread was just in its infancy was it not ?. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stirlo Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 I went to all the games in 07/08 - and trust me, it was a horrible season from start to finish. A reminder of just some of the "lowlights": - Hearts 0 Hibs 1. Opening day of the season Monday night game. We hardly created a chance. - ICT 2 Hearts 1. Lost a stoppage time winner to a 40 year old ex-Hibee (Brewster). - Hearts 0 St Mirren 1. Totally inept performance. - Hearts 2 ICT 3. Elliot sent off towards the end of the first half. Lost to a very late goal - Dundee Utd 4 Hearts 1. January 2nd, freezing cold, finished the game with 8 men. Probably the most depressed I've felt after a Hearts game - I honestly thought we could be heading for the first division after that game. - Hearts 0 Rangers 4. Midweek game - probably our worst performance against Rangers in many years. - Gretna 1 Hearts 0. Final game of the season. We lost to a goal in the third minute of injury time against a team that was about to go out of business - in front of a crowd of about 1000. That game summed the season up perfectly - you didn't know whether to laugh or cry. As we left Fir Park that night, at least we knew that the hell that was season 07/08 was over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naeclue Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 GRIM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedbump Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 We were rank rotten. The whole season stank to high heaven. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr X Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 I turned up every week expecting to be let down and completely bored. Invariably I was. It was a hellish taste of what it must be like to support the Hobos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jambo, Goodbye Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Velicka's double against Celtic in Glasgow on Halloween (was very apt) and beating Rangers 4-2 (it should of been 4-1 though) were two highlights in what was a crap season, both results offered hope which probably made the following weeks even harder to watch and digest. Had we worn green we would have looked like our fearless neighbours Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djh83 Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 A fair summing up, and thanks for not calling my thread 'stupid' or 'pointless' or resorting to abusive one-line put-downs as so many others have done. For the record, I too was pretty depressed at the end of 07/08, and especially during that truly horrendous run of 6 straight defeats in December 07 (which is why I menioned it in the OP). For that matter, I also haven't forgotten the utterly catastrophic opening day defeat against Hibs. I was just trying to say that in between times, results weren't really that bad. In particular, around October/November 07, I'm sure quite a few on here, yourself included, were making some reasonably positive noises about the team's progress.(Unfortunately this board only goes back to January 08 so I can't prove it!). I still also believe (and nobody's commented on this) that some very decent players established themselves in the team that season, and this in turn helped the far more enjoyable 08/09 campaign. I wasn't even trying to be controversial, just stir some close-season debate (think I've probably been scared off though). Nice closing sentence, by the way! RUBBISH. 07/08 probably stunted most of our players in terms of progression. The fact they had no manager or motivation. Look at Clum. Imagine for 07/08 we had had Csaba in charge. This season would have been the next step onwards and even better, we would have hit the ground running. Instead Csaba had to start from scratch with a team in complete disarray. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zhang Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 yes! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBigO Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 I guess the most important season now is the next one, but during the boring close season, I though a wee look back at the last 2 seasons might be interesting The Defining Sequences of Games From 8th Dec 07 to 2nd Jan 08, Hearts lost 6 straight games in 25 days. From 8th Nov 08 to 29th Nov 08, Hearts won 5 straight games in 22 days. Just as those 6 defeats defined 07/08, so the 5 wins defined 08/09, and if we remove these sequences from the equation Hearts actually got more points (I?m talking pre-split here, and it?s wrong to compare the last 5 games when the opposition is so different) in the earlier season (42 from 27 games) than in the latter (39 points from 28 games). My opinion is that, before and after that horrendous run over Christmas 07, Hearts actually weren?t as bad as was made out during that season. In fact, they were occasionally rather good ? did the 08/09 team ever play as well, for example, as in the 4-2 victory over Rangers and the 4-1 win over Aberdeen (perhaps only in the recent post-split 3-0 win over Dundee Utd). The Emergence of a team But my main reason for defending the 07/08 season is that the core of a pretty decent team emerged that season; Jonsson and Palazuelos were new to the team, Wallace and Driver played more often than they?d done before, Berra equaled his 35 appearances from the previous season. All these players formed the core of what was really a pretty young team, and this really formed the basis of the 08/09 team. (In a similar way, the core of the 85/86 team was formed during 84/85 which seemed a horrendous season at the time, but a lot better with a bit of retrospective reappraisal.) The closeness in quality outwith the OF On the face of it, Hearts improved from 8th to 3rd in 08/09, but in reality was there that much of a difference in quality between 3rd and 7th in 08/09, or for that matter between 3rd and 8th in 07/08? To illustrate this, Aberdeen pipped Hearts only on goal difference to get into the top 6, helped by 17 home games and 16 aways, while Hearts were the other way round. Aberdeen, who went on to play 20 home games and 18 aways that season, actually achieved 4th place (and if memory serves may even have snatched 3rd but for a bad decision in the game against Motherwell). Yet were Aberdeen really any better than Hearts that season? Summary None of this is to detract from Csaba, who I like as much as the next man, I just felt that we possibly rode our luck in the most recent season compared to the one before. As a final thought, we had the excellent Aguiar available for two thirds of the season last time out ? a luxury completely denied our various managers in 07/08?? Your threads taken a bit of a hammerin here mate! fwiw I see what you're getting at looking at it statistically. I said in 07/08 that we were so close to top 6 and had we achieved that then even europe wasn't beyond us. But alas, these are only statistics. What was wrong with that season was a complete lack of cohesion and fight. I don't really blame the players - as you say it was a very young team. To an extent they were hung out to dry. They did not have any tactical discipline instilled in them, they had no encouragement from the sidelines (or the stands, but that's another argument) and the whole season just lacked any passion. I think even if we'd missed out on Europe this year, we could atleast see that we had a team playing like they gave a toss and that's the big difference. We'd all love to see us win every game, but i think deep down, if our team (including the manager) does the best they possibly can and leaves every ounce out on the park, then we're happy (well most of us - there's obv a few on here who're never happy!). We were closer to that this year I take your point about the emergence of the youngsters, but imagine they had been coached - I think their REAL emergence was this year and next year could be very interesting if we hold onto them all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JamboRobbo Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 It was so bad that even some of the apologists on here grudgingly admitted we needed a manager and that Vlad wasn't the next Morinhio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.