Csaba Laszlo has been one of the surprises of the SPL season. The man currently known as "Hearts manager" picked up a squad who had played miserably all of last season, and managed to at least get them back towards the top end of the table. In fact, in the run up to Christmas, the Jambos were starting to threaten a sustained push for 3rd.
Since then, though, the wheels have come off a bit. Hearts haven't scored a goal in around 5 hours of playing time, and there are signs that Laszlo has rinsed the maximum out of his squad already. His rigid 4-5-1 is hard to beat but hardly the most creative formation, and they created practically nothing against Motherwell on Wednesday.
It wasn't primarily the tactics that let them down, however, but the players' work rate, and Laszlo teared into them after the match. At least we think he did - the man likes to talk so much that it's quite easy to get bored long before he's done talking.
Hearts desperately need a striker, as big-boned Nade clearly doesn't cut it, Tulberg is perma-knacked, and the kids aren't considered good enough. Will Vlad cough up for one? Not if the persistent bad news about his business interests in accurate. They have signed Ian Black from Inverness on a pre-contract for next season, but he's the only addition so far.
It's very likely that Hearts will finish January with a weaker squad rather than a stronger one, as the club tries to get some big earners off the unreliable wage bill and cash in on any saleable assets.
Then we will really see what Laszlo is made of. In many ways, he seems similar to Valdas Ivanauskas - a decent coach, but who became more and more visibly stressed by the week and eventually had to be removed from his duties by Vlad for his own health.
Things have been unusually calm at Hearts for months, now, and this simply won't do while Romanov is still in control. Another meltdown is long overdue.
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Much has been made of the 'crisis situation' at Tynecastle (mostly by the media and hibbies!) but there has been little in the way of evidence of that lately. This could all change after the transfer window but the fire sale that was predicted hasn't really been evident thus far.
Before the weekend's cup tie, we hadn't had a great run of results but given that the run of form that we had prior to this came as a real surprise, it would be daft for us to get too worried about that. As you pointed out, this is the same squad that got us a mighty 8th position finish last year so expectations were low to begin with, and when we do well it still comes as a pleasant surprise!
We're not at panic stations.Not yet anyway....
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