Gary Mackay: Hearts can’t keep letting Euro rivals off hook by slipping up

A dejected Hearts captain Christophe Berra looks on as Motherwell celebrate Sunday's last-gasp win. Pic: SNS

With the Dons having unexpectedly slipped up and Killie about to face Celtic, our trip to Motherwell represented a decent chance to enhance our prospects of qualifying for Europe. I don’t include Rangers in that because I suspect that they are that bit too far ahead of at this stage to be caught by us. Unfortunately, however, we slipped up and weren’t able to put pressure on any of the teams above us or open up more of a gap on St Johnstone, the team beneath us.

We’re now entering the stage of the season where league positions at the end of each match start to have extra significance, so it is vitally important that, after taking just one point from our last two league matches, we make our next two matches at Tynecastle count. These games, against St Mirren and then Celtic, are massive for us. One will need inner drive from the players in order to rise to the expectation while the other needs no build-up whatsoever because it is a showpiece match.

If we can come away from these two games with four points in the bag, I think we’d have to be quite happy with that. If we could somehow come away with six, that would really reignite our bid for a European place.

We had been going along reasonably well until that disastrous last minute at Motherwell cost us the chance of a point from what was always going to be a difficult match. If an individual mistake costs the team, there’s always a sense of disappointment. Colin Doyle has generally done fine since he’s come into the Hearts team. Unfortunately, when a goalie makes a mistake there’s generally no getting away with it because it usually results in a goal for the opposition. I feel for the lad.

Mistakes like that have been made by bigger players at far bigger clubs than Hearts. It’s always a shame when a goalie makes an error because it’s magnified a hundred-fold in relation to when an outfield player makes a mistake. That’s the nature of football though.

It’s all about how he bounces back now.

If the manager retains faith in him, hopefully the supporters and his fellow players will get behind him.

Ultimately, it’s only the manager who can decide whether Colin keeps the gloves for Saturday. He’ll know the relationship the goalkeeper has with his defenders and he’ll know the mentality of both of his goalkeepers in relation to how best to take things forward.

It’s not about punishing the keeper or anything like that by dropping him, it’s about knowing what type of character he is and deciding whether you think the mistake will affect him.

Do you put him in the firing line by getting him back in the team quickly? Or do you take him out of the firing line because you’re concerned it might have a negative effect?

It’s a difficult decision to make but the only people who will have a proper awareness of how he might respond are the coaching staff.