Beleaguered Hearts must hope they can flick a magic switch on cup final day

Since winning their Scottish Cup semi-final against Inverness Caledonian Thistle four weeks ago, Hearts have taken just one point from their four post-split league fixtures, and have scored only three goals.

Craig Levein and Steven MacLean were left to rue another post-split defeat at Aberdeen.

Given that they are away to Celtic in their final Premiership match and are sure to rest key men once more, the chances are they will conclude their league campaign with no post-split victories and engulfed by a cloud of negativity.

The absence of optimism for the cup final among supporters is remarkable but understandable given the lack of momentum within their team at present. A hard-earned point at Pittodrie might have gone some way to lifting the gloom since Craig Levein sent out a team minus several of his main players. For all that the understudies and youngsters competed well and held their own for much of the match against an Aberdeen side driven by the incentive of pipping Kilmarnock to third place, ultimately this was another defeat and another uninspiring ordeal for the travelling support and those watching back home on television.

Without either Uche Ikpeazu and Steven Naismith, Hearts look bereft of any punch and purpose. Steven MacLean, as willing and intelligent a worker as he is in attack, is unable to make things happen for himself and had nobody around him to offer pace or creative spark to help him get the better of Andy Considine and Scott McKenna.

With only one formidable league game to go, it is anybody’s guess at this point how the team will line up for their season-defining match against Celtic at Hampden in just a fortnight’s time.

On their day, with everyone fit and firing, Hearts have proved they can be a match for anyone in Scotland, but there is currently not one member of the squad who can be considered to be going into the cup final in peak form, with three of their most important players - Naismith, Ikpeazu and Peter Haring - all enduring varying degrees of fitness concern.

Levein and the increasingly beleaguered Hearts support can only hope that, somehow, against all logic, things click in their favour amid the Hampden frenzy.