Gary Mackay: Why I'm surprised by the speed of Hearts' revival

Hearts train ahead of the match with Kilmarnock. Pic: SNS

It’s been all about putting building blocks in place since Daniel Stendel arrived and now the players have the reward of knowing that they’ve gone from five points adrift at the foot of the table to now being off the bottom.

That should do wonders for their confidence and their belief in what the manager is trying to do. I could understand the general sense of frustration at not winning in Perth on Saturday after being 2-1 up but for me it said more about us that we were able to come from behind twice away from home. That, on the back of fighting back from a goal down to beat Rangers, shows that the manager has the players fighting for the cause and that there is now a real resolve in that dressing-room.

In terms of our remaining fixtures this month, I’m not overly concerned about the Falkirk game in the Scottish Cup or the Celtic game next week because that is basically a free hit for us.

The games that really matter are the ones like tonight’s against Kilmarnock, another side in the relegation mix. These are the games which will ultimately determine whether we get ourselves to safety from what was, just a few weeks ago, looking a pretty forlorn situation.

I’m pleasantly surprised by how quickly we’ve turned it round. I certainly don’t think this improvement would have occurred under the previous regime. I didn’t see these fighting qualities, this desire to get forward and this desire to fight back from losing positions under the previous regime. We seemed to be accepting defeat and poor results in the past but we’re not doing that now and we need to continue with that mentality.

We had five attacking players on the pitch for the last 20 minutes and we had a right-back getting into a position to score our late equaliser.

I just hope that against Kilmarnock this evening we can get in front and lead all the way as opposed to having to come from behind again.