Gary Mackay: Hearts need to be more adventurous away from home

All you can ask from your team is to be winning, and that's what Hearts are doing, but the level of performances seem to be fluctuating so much.

Hearts required a last minute Liam Boyce penalty to earn a 1-1 draw at Queen of the South last Friday. (Photo by Alan Harvey / SNS Group)

We're talking about from really positive to pretty dire. The only thing you can say for last Friday is that, from a poor performance, we were able to scrape another point.

When you watch other teams, one thing they all seem to have in different areas of the pitch is a change of pace. I don't really see that within the Hearts side, and you hope that's where the recruitment comes in. You hope the new signings will inject some pace into the side because, from what I viewed on Friday, Queen of the South had pace in different areas of the pitch and we found it hard to match that pace.

Also, if you are going to play football you need to be prepared to get hurt. There was a free-kick we put in during the second half and there was an opportunity where someone might have taken a wee dunt. I'm not singling him out, but it looked like Popescu had a clear chance, but I just don't think he committed fully – and we were 1-0 down at the time. Hearts supporters will accept poor performances, but they expect players to be totally committed when they pull on the jersey. To do that you need to be prepared to hurt in both boxes – either to stop goals or score opportunities.

The positive is we came away with a point and now Morton come to Tynecastle. Whether they think there are weaknesses in Hearts backline and have a go, or they come in and sit tight, we have to overcome whatever they put in front of us.

All I hope from a Hearts perspective is we go out with our team named to win the football match, and for me that means playing with two out and out strikers. Gnanduillet wasn't fit last weekend but hopefully, going forward, we'll be looking at a partnership with him up there as the main target alongside another striker, be it Boyce, Naismith or someone we recruit in the summer.

For me, at Tynecastle, Hearts have to be a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 team with at least one midfield player breaking forward, preferably two if it's a 4-3-3. Nodody's going to tell me that we should be going into a game with the back four and goalkeeper we have not feeling that one holding midfielder is enough to protect us.

I'm not saying that the other midfielders and wide players shouldn't track back, but if you're on the attack, five players behind the ball plus a goalkeeper should be enough. We should be able to have four or five players getting into the opposition box and creating problems for them.

We do that at Tynecastle more often but I think in away games it would be great if we looked a bit more adventurous. Maybe we're set out to be adventurous and it's the way opposition teams are playing against us that's impacting on us and we're not able to deal with that just now.

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