Hearts v Motherwell 23/08/2025

[MJC]

8 minutes ago, grizzlyg said:

2 of our first 3 games have been home to rangers and away to hearts plus away to st mirren.  Not an easy start to season.  We are a job in progress and I believe in Askou.

No arguments there and again we have shown some really promising stuff, the type of which was never evident under our previous three managers. You can see what JBA is doing and he is building a competitive team which we need to hope comes good, but as I said we need to make that count by turning draws into wins. It’s early days though still.

To take a step back, looking at our opening fixtures…Rangers(H), St.Mirren and Heats(A) to come through that unbeaten is commendable. However as I said context is important with draws and I’m afraid 3-0 up with 20 to go and end up hanging on for a point isn’t good enough. 
 

Next week at home against Kilmarnock is crucial, we NEED to pick up all three points.

[mfc]

4 minutes ago, well_said said:

Thank goodness someone  can see McGinn was mainly at fault for the second standing with hand in the air claiming offside when he was the man playing him onside, the same thing happened again later in the match. 

Mcginn has been a solid player for us but there's no way we should have been starting this season with him as a first choice.

[wellsince75]

Personal view is we dominated via midfield for 60 mins and were coasting.   

Hearts bulked up in midfield and we withdrew Slattery and put on forward players.  I thought Hearts dominated us for the final 30 and honestly could have won, which would have been even more gutting. 

I don't think it's all down to the defence or keeper, we didn't react well to their subs and made formational changes and poor subs that for me lost our way completely . 

The joys of being a Well fan. 

[grizzlyg]

Just now, MJC said:

No arguments there and again we have shown some really promising stuff, the type of which was never evident under our previous three managers. You can see what JBA is doing and he is building a competitive team which we need to hope comes good, but as I said we need to make that count by turning draws into wins.

To take a step back, looking at our opening fixtures…Rangers(H), St.Mirren and Heats(A) to come through that unbeaten is commendable. However as I said context is important with draws and I’m afraid 3-0 up with 20 to go and end up hanging on for a point isn’t good enough. 
 

Next week at home against Kilmarnock is crucial, we NEED to pick up all three points.

Yup , there is no excuse for throwing away 3pts with 25 to play. I can imagine JB raging with them.  A setback today but we dust ourselves down ahead of next week

[mio]

I’ll take that disappointment today and forget about it if we go out and blow Killie and Kettlewell away next week.

[MJC]

3 minutes ago, grizzlyg said:

Yup , there is no excuse for throwing away 3pts with 25 to play. I can imagine JB raging with them.  A setback today but we dust ourselves down ahead of next week

A huge setback and no getting away from but that but certainly not a disaster either. A point at Tynecastle is always a good result when the dust settles. 
 

We just need that first win on the board. 

[joewarkfanclub]

22 minutes ago, MJC said:

Well before the game you’d snap the arm off anyone who offers you a draw at Tynecastle against an in form Hearts side. But context is everything with draws.

Regardless of what was another very good first half performance and a strong start to the second half we have thrown away a 3-0 lead with less than twenty minutes left and that is totally and utterly unacceptable, as well as being completely unprofessional. So it’s two points dropped rather than a point gained.

See if you had just stopped your post there......

It wasnt a bottle job. It was naive tactically from the manager and a mixture of tiredness, poor discipline and bad decision making from the players.

Also, we may not have won a league game yet, but we are also undefeated against 3 of the better teams in the league at 2 of the harder venues.

For the first 60 minutes thats as good as Ive seen us play in a long long time. The 3rd goal is an absolute thing of beauty.

For a brand new team and manager its always going to be a work in progress at this stage. Today IS a sore one because of the circumsrances and we DO need to learn from the mistakes we are making, but how enjoyable is it to watch compared to last year?

[wellon]

27 minutes ago, grizzlyg said:

We are a different beast under Askou, first 65 mins great but when your keeper sells 2 goals it doesn't help

Yep, 1 definitely maybe 2 , pity as he has been ok so far

surely that's bslmer finished tho , trying to play offside for 2nd and then no challenge 

[joewarkfanclub]

9 minutes ago, MJC said:

No arguments there and again we have shown some really promising stuff, the type of which was never evident under our previous three managers. You can see what JBA is doing and he is building a competitive team which we need to hope comes good, but as I said we need to make that count by turning draws into wins. It’s early days though still.

To take a step back, looking at our opening fixtures…Rangers(H), St.Mirren and Heats(A) to come through that unbeaten is commendable. However as I said context is important with draws and I’m afraid 3-0 up with 20 to go and end up hanging on for a point isn’t good enough. 
 

Next week at home against Kilmarnock is crucial, we NEED to pick up all three points.

There ye are now! 😍😍😍

[well_said]

9 minutes ago, mfc said:

Mcginn has been a solid player for us but there's no way we should have been starting this season with him as a first choice.

It makes no difference if he should starting or not , but for an experienced player to do that not once but twice is very poor in my opinion.

[wellon]

28 minutes ago, SteelmaninOZ said:

We will get there I think Ox will be in goal next week 

Again ox becoming better by not playing...he had a few moments last year too 

[Orinoco]

we scored three, but if we are honest Maswanhise appart from his goal and AP were poor. 

Its disappointing not to get three points from the position we were in, but its still early days, and we did not get beat again. 

 

[MJC]

9 minutes ago, joewarkfanclub said:

but how enjoyable is it to watch compared to last year?

It’s night and day. We actually look like we want to play football and win games instead of conceding possession and hoping to nick something from a set piece. There are promising signs, no question about that.

However, we bottled it today. We’re bad enough with 2-0 leads usually but today we get a third and we still don’t win. I’m sorry but to me that’s bottling it. 
 

That said, there are encouraging signs going forward and I’m not as disheartened as I would normally be at us conceding a 3-0 lead to only draw.

[Kmcalpin]

Keep the heid folks. It was a very good result. A very tough start to the new campaign and we're unbeaten in 3. Forget about losing 3 late goals; we were always going to concede and Hearts fully deserved their point, as did we. Yes, disappointing to lose 3 but thats football. The big plus for me is that we played Hearts today with over a week of the window to go. It would be far worse to have recorded this result next Saturday. Hopefully, we'll look back on today in 6 months time and say it was a very positive result.  JBA has now seen our defence at its worst and should know by now that he has to strengthen the defence and whats more has over a week to do it. He will already have been looking at defenders and Hearts comeback today should crystallise and galvanise his thoughts. 

All this, and we played some really entertaining football. 

[robsterwood]

Much as we have had plaudits for football this season we have not yet won a league game and it took us extra time to beat championship side. I'm concerned about goalkeeper, defending and also game management after this. A team should be able to see out a 3 . 0 lead with 25 minutes to go.

[MJC]

Just now, robsterwood said:

Much as we have had plaudits for football this season we have not yet won a league game and it took us extra time to beat championship side. I'm concerned about goalkeeper, defending and also game management after this. A team should be able to see out a 3 . 0 lead with 25 minutes to go.

Correct. A perfect summary of where we currently are. 

[wellgirl]

6 minutes ago, robsterwood said:

Much as we have had plaudits for football this season we have not yet won a league game and it took us extra time to beat championship side. I'm concerned about goalkeeper, defending and also game management after this. A team should be able to see out a 3 . 0 lead with 25 minutes to go.

Game management? What do you think Jens got wrong today? 

[wellgirl]

5 minutes ago, MJC said:

Correct. A perfect summary of where we currently are. 

You predicted a defeat to be fair 

[SteelmaninOZ]

The gaffer said 

 

[couttsy]

Hard to know how to feel after that. As we’re all saying being 3-0 and drawing is not good enough, however for 60 mins we absolutely bossed Hearts at Tynecastle playing some outstanding football, can’t remember that ever happening in my lifetime!
 

We have 3 draws, all from games we would have been massive under dogs in, and have played some lovely football at times. The next 2 against Killie H and Dundee A will tell us a lot, 4 point minimum needed and I expect us to get them after watching our quality today. 

[Orinoco]

three games in and still undefeated. Sure there are weaknesses in the team, but we are work in progress. 

Every player on the pitch made mistakes. Collectively we can and will do better. 

As for losing our lead, better teams than us have done similar, especially in hostile stadiums like tynecastle. 

 

 

[wellgirl]

They beat us 3-1 last time I watched them. Of course it's a sore one but we need to take the positives 

[wellon]

3 minutes ago, wellgirl said:

You predicted a defeat to be fair 

Always predicts a defeat, hoing to get it right on occasion 

[MJC]

2 minutes ago, wellgirl said:

You predicted a defeat to be fair 

I certainly didn’t see us being as comfortable against Hearts at Tynecastle as we were for the first hour or so today. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.

In the end though we were holding on for a draw and it really wouldn’t have been much of a surprise if Hearts had nicked it at the death so I don’t think my prediction of a defeat was too far off. 

[wellgirl]

Just now, MJC said:

I certainly didn’t see us being as comfortable against Hearts at Tynecastle as we were for the first hour or so today. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.

In the end though we were holding on for a draw and it really wouldn’t have been much of a surprise if Hearts had nicked it at the death so I don’t think my prediction of a defeat was too far off. 

To be fair some people did say our new style of football would see us conceding a few as well