Gary Mackay: No more carping from me if Hearts keep this up

Michael Stewart and myself voiced a few complaints about Hearts last week, but we've certainly had our gas put at a peep for a while after Saturday's performance.

Don Cowie, left, put in a fine display for Hearts in the 5-1 defeat of Inverness. Pic: SNS

That’s part and parcel of being football supporters or pundits, however. I have no problem with people making fun of me in light of Saturday’s result. If you publicly offer your opinion on how you feel about something, it can often come back to bite you.

I was asked a question and I called it as I saw it, with regard to the Craig Levein/Robbie Neilson dynamic. Robbie responded by saying that the current model works well for Hearts, and on Saturday nobody could argue that it didn’t. If that model continues to work for years going forward, I’ll be a happy man.

I can certainly have no complaints about Saturday. To produce a performance like that and score five goals in the Premiership is always worthy of praise although, it must be said, Inverness were pretty abject.

One of the main factors in the victory was the excellent performance of Don Cowie. He’s got good experience and seems like a switched-on lad with a good head on his shoulders who others can learn from. He scored two good goals and was involved in virtually everything. You need an attacking threat from the midfield area because they are hard for defenders to pick up and ultimately he gave us that.

Arnaud Djoum did it last season. If we can get both of those players dovetailing then we should get plenty joy from that area of the pitch. We also have Jamie Walker back from suspension this Saturday while Tony Watt is coming to the boil nicely.

We’ve had a couple of good results back to back, so we have a platform to build from. Partick Thistle away is never easy, but we should go there on Saturday with plenty of confidence and try and play on the front foot, looking for nothing less than three points.

It might be hard to replicate Saturday’s performance level every week, but there’s no doubt in my mind that we should be approaching every game in the manner we did against Inverness and at least trying to play that way.

If we do that, you won’t hear any more carping from me!