Neil Critchley has been left astounded by Hearts’ performance as they lost at Kilmarnock to stay bottom of the Premiership.
Ten-man Killie shrugged off the early sending off of Robbie Deas and went in front just ten minutes later through Bruce Anderson’s penalty.
They then put in a power of work to negate being a man down although the Jambos didn’t offer much either.
They failed to force the issue and in truth it seemed inevitable the game would end 1-0, which it did.
Kieran O’Hara made a save from James Penrice and Yan Dhanda struck the bar at the death but that was all Hearts could muster.
Critchley ‘shocked and stunned’ by Hearts display
Neil Critchley couldn’t believe what he was seeing at Rugby Park as his Hearts side lost to ten-man Kilmarnock.
He feels his players played right into Killie’s hands by allowing them to be comfortable and accepting how the game was going to play out instead of doing something to change it.
And the Englishman has accused his players of not having hunger or desire on the day.
He said: “I’m more than disappointed. I was stunned by what I’ve just witnessed. I thought we started the game quite brightly, the first three minutes, then the sending off changes the course of the game.
“We got involved in the emotion of the game for the next ten minutes, with the crowd being involved, and we made poor decisions with the ball for that short period, and for the rest of the game with the ball.
“We made poor decisions off the ball as well, and one of them cost us a penalty, which ultimately lost us the game.
“But after that, we’ve had ample enough time to get back into the game, and we didn’t produce nowhere near enough quality, intelligence, our decision-making was woeful. It’s like we forgot where the goal was.
“And I can assure you the message was: ‘We need to ask questions of the defence’.
“They were going to put men behind the ball, defend low. And when you defend low, there’s not a lot of space behind, there’s not a lot of space. They give you the space in front, and we just played in front of them, we played into their hands, and we didn’t do anywhere near enough. It was as if we accepted what was happening on the pitch, and I was really shocked by what I saw.
“I’ve just said the same thing to the players. What I say to you, I say to the players, there’ll never be a gap between what I say in the dressing room and here. I give them my honest feelings. They spoke in as a group as well when I left, and we need to make sure that we draw a line in the sand, and that level of performance can’t happen again. That’s why I’m shocked by it, because I’ve not seen that from this group.
“We’ve lost games, but even when we’ve lost, we’ve shown desire, hunger, we’ve gone right to the end, we’ve played with aggression and insensitivity, and we’ve shown none of that today, none of it. If you look at our level of performance after playing in Europe, in some tough games, we’ve produced good performances.
“Now, we’ve not always won, but today that was not a good performance at all. It was a million miles away from that. I sincerely hope that that’s a one-off. If it isn’t, then we’ll have a problem. Only time will tell, and the next few performances will tell me a great deal.”
Beni Baningime Hearts injury update
Critchley also has mounting injury issues and it is not good news on Frankie Kent who joins fellow Hearts defender Stephen Kingsley on the sidelines potentially for the rest of the season.
But it is better news on Beni Baningime despite the midfielder missing today’s game.
Critchley added: “We’re hopeful that Beni will come back quicker. He had an injection early on in the week, just to settle a little bit of an issue in his knee down, but we’re hopeful that will clear that up.
“He’s done a little bit of running, and we’re hopeful that that will settle the issue and he can return sooner.”