Former Hearts star slams first-team flops for 'gutless and disgraceful' performances

Former Hearts defender Allan Preston has labelled the performances of the club’s struggling stars as “gutless” and “disgraceful” after watching the Tynecastle side suffer a second embarrassing result in the space of five days.

A dejected Andy Irving lies on the turf after inadvertently knocking the ball beyond his own goalkeeper. Picture: SNS

Off the back of Tuesday’s Scottish Cup exit at the hands of Highland League outfit Brora Rangers, Robbie Neilson’s side were humbled again with a 3-2 home defeat to Queen of the South.

Instead of showing a response following heavy criticism in the wake of the result earlier this week, Hearts instead found themselves 2-0 down inside 22 minutes as Connor Shields bagged a double for Allan Johnston’s side.

Hearts were able to haul themselves level through goals from Mihai Popescu and Armand Gnanduillet but fell behind for good when Andy Irving inexplicably turned the ball beyond his own goalkeeper to give Queens the three points.

For Preston, a long-time BBC Scotland pundit, the reaction was far from good enough as he laid into the underperforming squad.

He said: “Just a really poor performance. I expected better. I thought you would get a wounded animal today after all the criticism from Tuesday and that wasn’t the case.

“Hearts are in a real quagmire. I don’t know where they go from here. There’s a lot of soul searching that’s got to go on, from the board members, from Ann Budge, from Robbie and his staff and, most importantly, from the players.

“The last five days for this football club were simply not good enough. Some of them were absolutely gutless today. The two performances they’ve put in for this club have been nothing short of disgraceful.”

Message from the editor

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our sports coverage with a digital sports subscription.