Stephen Kingsley admitted the 2024/25 season has not been good enough at Tynecastle

Returning from four months out after hamstring surgery, Stephen Kingsley has walked back into a chaotic situation at Hearts. A substitute appearance in last week’s Scottish Cup semi-final loss to Aberdeen saw him rejoin competitive action just as his club’s competitive season effectively ended. It is a difficult period in Gorgie and Kingsley acknowledges supporters’ discontent.

An early League Cup exit against Falkirk, the shambolic European elimination against Petrocub, and the failure to reach the Premiership’s top six amounts to an unacceptable campaign. The defender is experienced enough to know this is not a time for sugar-coating. He has known euphoric highs in a maroon shirt and accepted the adulation which came with them, so now he is fully accepting of football’s other side.

“It's the way it is. As I said, it's the way football has always been,” said Kingsley, speaking ahead of Saturday’s first bottom-six fixture against Dundee at Tynecastle. “If teams are massively underperforming, the criticism comes along with that. It's always been a factor in football that you need to deal with. There's no two ways about it. You can't shy away from it. It's a bit of a disappointment from our point of view and the criticism comes with that.

“If you accept that when it's all going well and good, you obviously need to deal with that pain when it's not. As I said, we've got a chance now. We've got five games to go to finish the season on a positive note and put ourselves in a position that we can come back into pre-season and really try to build on something - hopefully build a special season next season.”

Hearts players see and hear some fans’ comments on social media and in the stands. Kingsley stressed that is not the biggest issue motivating them to improve, though. “No, I think the pressure comes on ourselves,” he said. “We know that the criticism is going to come because we put demands and standards on ourselves. When we don't reach those demands and standards, we feel it before anyone else needs to tell us.

Michael Steinwender and Cammy Devlin red cards brought disappointment in Gorgie

“We hear it, we see it and we accept it because we know it's below-par. We're the first ones to look at it and admit ourselves that this isn't the level that we need to be at, this isn't the position in the league that we need to be at. As I said, we need to build on it and really start getting that positivity about Hearts again and hopefully we can build something special for next season.”

Kingsley has helped deal with some of the fallout from Hampden Park last weekend following red cards for Hearts players Michael Steinwender and Cammy Devlin. “Aye. It's just the way it is in these big games, it's disappointing that it happened. Obviously, I've been in a situation where I've been sent off before as well. It's just a horrible feeling, but that's football and we need to go over it because it doesn't end there.

“As I said, we've got a massive game on Saturday that everyone needs to be at, no matter what happened last week. It's a huge game, we need to win it and everyone's focused on that, no matter what happened last week.”