Hearts were meek in the second half as they lost a second successive Edinburgh derby to resurgent Hibs.
The Hibees were 2-1 winners earlier today as they went a remarkable 15 games without defeat and temporarily took third spot in the Premiership ahead of Aberdeen ad Dundee United facing off this afternoon.
After going behind early on, the Jambos responded and equalised quickly through Jorge Grant before going on to enjoy the besot of the rest of the first half.
But they were poor in the second period as they allowed their fierce rivals to take over and exploit the wide areas to keep them under pressure for most of the 45 minutes.
Neil Critchley admitted Hearts were not at the races despite beating St Mirren midweek and he has again bemoaned their performance for the second part of this game.
Critchley on how unrecognisable Hearts lost to Hibs
The Englishman didn’t feel his side were their true selves in the second period and admits they didn’t deserve to salvage anything from the game.
As he tried to put his finger on what went wrong, he insists they played into the home side’s hands by allowing it to be come a transitional game.
“Not with our second-half performance, no,” Critchley said. “For the first half, we were a slightly better team, had good control of the game, played the game how we wanted to play after giving away a really poor first goal.
“In the second half, I think we just lost belief in what we were doing a little bit, which is not like us. If you don’t get your defensive organisation right, and you don’t then keep the ball, that allows the opposition to build momentum in the game. That’s what happened. We’ve taken a great strike to win the game, but I was really disappointed with how we played the game in the second half.
“I don’t think it’s a lack of commitment or competing. You’ve got to compete in different ways. It’s inevitable that, if you don’t defend well as a team, and you’re not organised and we become passive, and then you give the ball away when you get it as well, you don’t show enough belief in what you’re doing or your quality suffers.
“Then you keep sending the ball back to the opposition, and it becomes more of a transitional game, which suits Hibs. The game suited us in the first half, the game suited them in the second half. And we have to learn from that. We have to do much better than what we’ve done today. Last time we went on a run after losing a derby. Hopefully, we can do that again.
“It’s a bad defeat. It’s a derby defeat so it’s not nice at all. The players have had enough praise in the last few months. Today, we’ll get criticised and rightly so for the way we played in the second half. That was not us on the pitch.
“But we’ve taken six points from nine this week. We’d have liked to have taken nine. We’d have liked to have taken six points and maybe in a different way as well. However, we’ve still got games to go to get to the top six and find us in the split. And that’s our focus after a really important game in the Cup next Friday night.”
Hearts in battle for top six
Hearts are now probably out of the race for third and in a fight to make the top six with games against Ross County, Celtic, Dundee United and Motherwell to come before the split.
Asked if they need to respond to make the top six, the manager added: “Yes, definitely. I think it’ll go down, possibly, to the last weekend.
“I think there’s four games to go now before the split, and it’s very tight, so every point matters. We’ve lost an opportunity today to get back into the top six, but hopefully we have to show a response from this and go again.
“We’ve been on a good run. Today’s a huge disappointment and it’s up to us now to show a response.”