Hearts' Stephen Kingsley doesn't hold back his anger over 'naive' display at Celtic Park

Anger became impossible to contain for Hearts captain Stephen Kingsley at Celtic Park. Normally a measured and composed character, he was visibly enraged at various points during Sunday’s 7-1 defeat. Watching him punch the air and bawl expletives in frustration following Celtic’s fifth goal just about summed up the afternoon for those from Tynecastle.

Kingsley doesn’t take kindly to such embarrassments. He isn’t used to maulings and takes them personally. His response, although driven by sheer rage, is exactly the kind you would want from a defender when his team are leaking goals. Too many individual errors, too much space and a wide open defence cost Hearts in Glasgow’s east end. They were without influential figures like Craig Halkett, Tom Renaud and Blair Spittal through injury, but despite recording more shots at goal than Celtic, they finished with their heaviest competitive loss at Parkhead.

“It's just very raw. Embarrassment, I think, with the first half in terms of the way we lost the goals,” said Kingsley. “I think we shot ourselves in the foot countless times. Celtic were clinical, fair play to them, but I just felt like we played right into their hands. We made too many mistakes, two set-pieces to start it off. It kills you straight away. You can't do that when you go to places like that. I think it was just a calamity of errors. Every error we made seemed to be exposed. They were good at it. Obviously, they're a great counter-attacking team. They've got pace, they've got quality. It's very disappointing that we knew that going into the game and played right into their hands.”

When asked what prompted his outburst following Jamie McCart’s own goal which put Celtic 5-1 ahead on half-time, Kingsley answered with brutal honesty. “To be honest, I'm surprised it was just the fifth goal I looked angry after. I think it was every goal that was so frustrating,” he remarked. “The first one was a bit disorganised in terms of the set-piece. I don't think it was exactly how we wanted it to be, and then it led to the goal. It's a setback, but you've still got plenty of time to get back in the game. But to lose the second straight after was a kick in the guts.

“Things went from bad to worse from then on. It just felt like any mistake we made was just getting punished. The most frustrating thing about it is we knew they were like that. We knew that if we gave the ball away in dangerous areas, they had the pace, they had the power, they had the quality to go and punish you.

“Emotions were running high afterwards. It’s very hard to say anything after a game like that. Half-time, similar. As I said, I think we shot ourselves in the foot countless times. I'm trying to think of any goal that Celtic scored that we didn't play a part in. The mistake, the corners straight off the bat, it's criminal to lose two set-pieces in the first opening parts of the game. After that, the errors that we made, giving the ball away and being so stretched. As I said, it played it into their hands. We'll probably have a think about it and analyse it. Then we need to move on because we've got another massive game coming up and we need to go into it full of belief that we can go and get something.”

The upcoming big fixture he refers to is Thursday’s UEFA Conference League tie away to Trabzonspor. Papara Park might well be even more hostile than Celtic Park, and the Turkish side boast some reputable names of European football: Mo Salah, Fabinho, Andre Onana and Ruslan Malinovskyi to name but four. Hearts will be up against it again. There is no time to dwell on Sunday’s disappointment.

“We need to get over it now, don’t we? It's one of those results that, if you linger on it, then you can let it fester and seep into future performances. We can't have that. It's up to myself as one of the more experienced players and the other boys in the changing room who have been here a bit longer than some of the new ones to make sure we try and put this to bed. We look at it, obviously, and we look at things that we've done wrong.

“To be honest, we probably know that ourselves after this game. Then we put it to bed and move on to the next game because the next one's not going to get any easier. We've obviously got European competition again on Thursday, another hard game away. So we need to bounce back quick and really try to put on a performance that we can be proud of because Sunday was far from that.”

Hearts need to learn quickly from the wrongs if they are to have any chance of gaining a result in Turkiye. “Don't make as many mistakes. That’s an obvious one, I think,” said Kingsley. “Don't be as naive, I think, probably. It's hard to sum up the emotions after a game like that, but I think it was naive, eh? I think after the second one goes in, there's a point where you need to build yourself back into the game, but I just don't think we did that. I don't think we gave ourselves a chance to because of the mistakes that we made that were punished. And as I said, fair play to Celtic. They were clinical. But it was very, very frustrating. Every goal I felt, very frustrating.”

Kingsley stated that defeat in May’s title decider was a worse feeling than losing 7-1 at the same venue. “Nothing will ever be worse than that,” he admitted. The 32-year-old stressed the need for collective responsibility. “There's no-one going to be pointing any fingers at one specific person or one specific mistake. I think we all need to take accountability for our own performances , our own mistakes. Have a look at ourselves and what we can do better and learn from it.

“We've got a squad that has a great attitude, there are great boys in the changing room. No-one's going to chuck in the towel, even though it obviously looked like it when you go five, six, seven behind. We need to stay mentally strong now and try and build ourselves back up so we can go on a bit of a run again and get a wee bit of confidence back because that will knock it a wee bit. But this is why you're in football. You're going to have these setbacks, days that you're going to be off it. On Sunday, so many of us were off it that it resulted in the outcome. But we've got no time to rest on our laurels now.”