Premiership boss reacts to possible Hearts XI changes as prediction game difficulty increases amid injuries
Motherwell are up next for Hearts in their latest Premiership encounter.
Motherwell manager Alfred Johansson admits Hearts’ starting team against his side will be hard to pinpoint amid a raft of injuries.
The Swede in charge at Fir Park has been impressed by Hearts head coach Wouter Vrancken and his consistency surrounding the attacking Tynecastle game-plan. He has not been helped by injuries, and during Thursday’s loss at Trabzonspor, forward Rogers Mato at left-back headlined a selection of players featuring in different positions.
Harry Milne and Christian Borchgrevink both left the Conference League trip to Turkey with new injuries but all Johansson can do is focus on how Motherwell set-up. He said: “I think that he will not change anything. He seemed quite strong on his things, the way that the team have been playing.
Motherwell on Hearts approach
“It's definitely going to be more difficult to predict their starting 11 based on that they have a lot of a lot of injuries and so on. But it's not the most important thing how they set up the team. It's how we set up our team. So I'll be thinking much, much more about than who is playing left full back in Hearts.”
Five defeats in succession have sparked criticisms of Johansson’s team, who lost 3-2 last weekend at Kilmarnock. He added: “I think it's still collective mistakes. Maybe not the whole team, but sometimes I felt that when when we've been attacking, we haven't always had the numbers in the box, something that we've been speaking about previously.
“And that's not because of an individual mistake, it's because it's not strong enough yet. The behaviours that we try to put into every people's job description is not automatic enough yet, but it will be.
“Against Killie, we saw the 10s being a lot in the opposition box and scoring goals, and having shots, and so on. So that's one part of it. And the other part is like, for instance, backline, right? If someone is losing a duel, there should be someone covering him, and these things we need to continue to work, work, work.
“Because we can't be reliant on people winning all the duels or so on or things like this. So that's it. And if you are referring to the goalkeeper playing out from the back, then it was very similar last year. Got punished from that. Conceding goals from that last season too. It's just a matter of being good enough and it's so easy to forget these things now, right?”
The Scottish Football Social Club is presented by BetSBK.com | 18+ | Gamble Responsibly