Hearts ace at a loss to explain potentially fatal flaw in chase for third place

Hearts defender Toby Sibbick is at a lose to explain the club’s poor away form this season as they seek a rare victory on their travels in the bid to reclaim third place.

The Tynecastle side go to St Mirren on Saturday seeking to cut into the five-point gap held by Aberdeen in the best-of-the-rest spot at the same time as the Dons take on Edinburgh rivals Hibs at Pittodrie.

In order to gain a crucial three points, Hearts will have to pick up their first away victory in the league in 2023. Only Kilmarnock have accumulated a higher percentage of their points total at home this season with only 29 per cent of the Jambos overall tally coming in games away from Gorgie.

They’ve won just three times away in the cinch Premiership all campaign, the last of which came in a 3-2 triumph at St Johnstone toward the end of 2022. But on the eve of their penultimate away trip, Sibbick insists they’re not thinking about the past and instead concentrating on where they can hurt their hosts.

Hearts centre-back Toby Sibbick speaks to the media ahead of his side's trip to St Mirren this weekend. Picture: SNS

“I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s a strange one,” he said. “Our away form this season hasn’t been good and it wasn’t great last season either.

“It’s something we do need to work on. If we get three points on Saturday it would be a massive boost headed into the final three games of the season. There’s no margin of error.

"The manager hasn’t addressed it. We’ve been just focusing on the opponents, their strengths and weaknesses on the training field and we’re just looking to implement that on Saturday. Not to play to their strengths but play to their weaknesses, while playing to our strengths as well.”

Hearts’ anaemic away form is all the more puzzling because they’ve been consistently backed by a large and vocal support throughout the campaign.

The clash at the SMiSA Stadium will see a similar backing with the club having sold out their full allocation.

“Even thought we’ve not had a good away record, the fans have been tremendous in following us. We can only be thankful for them,” said Sibbick.

“We’ll need them again on Saturday and hopefully we can send them home happy from an away ground.”

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