James Penrice's honest views on Hearts, fans, boos, ambition and standards - exclusive

SNS

Hearing the cacophony of boos whilst trudging off the Dens Park pitch at half-time on Saturday was a chastening experience for James Penrice. Even when fans of previous clubs Partick Thistle, East Fife and Livingston were at their most furious, their modest numbers would have struggled to raise the decibel level to that which pierced the Hearts players’ ears in Dundee.

Being 3-0 down and defending haphazardly is always going to incur the wrath of Tynecastle supporters. Which is exactly what transpired at Dens as the half-time whistle sounded and the away support vented their understandable disgust. Players heading towards the dressing-rooms were left in no doubt that their collective performance was well below the standard expected.

Penrice was one of few to achieve pass marks on a day most of his team-mates will want to forget. A summer arrival as a free agent following three years at Livingston, he looks like a sound acquisition on the left side of defence. Two of Dundee’s goals came down the opposite flank but the 25-year-old takes no satisfaction from not being directly at fault. He knows Hearts’ collective effort simply wasn’t acceptable.

“It just wasn’t good enough. We can’t go out and play like that, can’t make those mistakes,” he said in an exclusive Edinburgh News interview. “All the goals are preventable. It’s just not good enough defensively and we’ve got to learn from it. It’s a long season. That’s all I can really say. Hopefully it’s a blip and we just keep going.”

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He had no argument regarding the jeering. “It’s not good at all hearing that. The message at half-time was to go and try to get a goal and get back in the game. We got a goal and had a couple of chances to put even more pressure on, but you are giving yourself a really tough challenge being 3-0 down at half-time. Walking off the pitch, it’s never nice to hear that but it’s deserved. That first half was nowhere near good enough.”

Asked what players must to do learn lessons and defend with conviction, Penrice gave an honest response. “It’s definitely about looking at it back,” he said. “We will go over it and we will need to because you go to places like that and it’s going to be that way - it’s going to be a battle. They beat us in the battle and that’s how they got their three goals.

“The three goals were our mistakes, they were really preventable, and everyone in that changing room knows it’s not good enough. Dundee did well last season playing that kind of football. It was direct, they brought in [striker] Simon Murray and he just adds to that directness. We should have dealt with it and we didn’t. We should have done a lot better.”

He is no less candid when questioned on his own displays since arriving at Tynecastle. After missing the final three months of last season with Livingston due to a hip injury, Penrice is nearing full match sharpness once again. He is a tough critic of himself who demands the highest standards.

“I could have been a bit better defensively on Saturday,” he said. “I was probably going long [too much]. I probably expect more from myself in terms of my own performance, but it’s my second 90 minutes in six months. That’s not excuses. I want to do well here but playing like that [at Dundee], you aren’t going to last long. It needs to improve from everyone. We want to go and challenge and do successful things this season. We won’t do that playing like Saturday.”