Hearts can’t live with, or without, Europe

Heart of Midlothian have assembled a squad for a marathon, not a sprint, but they have still come off the starting blocks like the tortoise against the hare. They will roll into Motherwell for their fifth game of the season on Sunday and are still without a win. For a club that has brought a wave of signings as an act of future-proofing, the present is becoming somewhat of a concern.
There is no cause for alarm about stuttering in August when the season stretches to the end of May. Hearts have more than enough to finish third again even if they lose at Fir Park and end the weekend already eight points behind Aberdeen, should the buoyant Dons win again on Sunday against Kilmarnock.
What Hearts’ early stumbles have done, though, is ventilate a conversation about whether they might become the latest club to finish third one season — and by a distance — only to be pulled back into the pack because simultaneously battling at home and in Europe is too much. The highest non-Old Firm finisher has changed in each of the past seven Premiership campaigns; in chronological order Aberdeen, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen and Hearts again.
Hearts know all of this. They know that as the only top-flight club outwith Celtic and Rangers to be guaranteed European group-stage football this season they were certain to face a challenging fixture schedule. That explained the attempted future-proofing; the attempt to build a squad to allow for rotation between games.
Over the past two years Aberdeen and Hearts themselves have tried to run parallel campaigns in the league and in European group stages and it has been beyond both of them. Two seasons ago Hearts made 13 signings to prepare for a campaign that ran to 50 games, with 23 players getting into double figures for appearances. The demands were too much and they slipped from finishing third to fourth and surrendered automatic group stage access to Aberdeen.
Last season Aberdeen made 14 signings and ended up playing 54 games because of decent runs in both domestic cups — using 22 players for at least ten appearances each. As Hearts had, they struggled in the league and their deterioration of their year-on-year league finishes was far more dramatic, from third to seventh.
Now it is back to Hearts to chase the twin-track targets of competing in a European group stage without surrendering third place. The transfer window closes at 11pm on Friday night, and so far they have signed nine players to enhance a squad that finished third by a clear 12 points last season. It is a calculated, strategic attempt to empower them to deal with at least six and potentially eight group games and the punishing schedule of Thursday-Sunday games.
The strategy is sensible and pretty much unavoidable, but not without its own problems in terms of man-management and squad chemistry. As one Hearts figure put it, “we’re not exactly Chelsea but we do have a lot of players to keep happy”. They have built a group big enough that it will be a challenge to give everyone enough game time to keep them content.
They made one change between drawing with Rangers and losing at Dundee. Then there were eight changes for the team that played in the Premier Sports Cup at Falkirk, and another five for Viktoria Plzen away in the Europa League play-off first leg on Thursday.
Whisper it, given the lamentable record in a tournament the club has not won since 1962, but crashing out of the cup in that shock defeat at Falkirk should have a silver lining, given it will lessen the overall fixture burden by up to three ties.
The defeat was bruising, all the same. After it the manager Steven Naismith said that losing after eight changes “just clears it up that we can’t rotate as much”. There is an argument that despite all their business the squad is stronger, but the strongest team may be only marginally improved given that one fine full-back, Alex Cochrane, was sold and potentially another one, Gerald Taylor, brought in on loan. The central defender Daniel Oyegoke is the only other new arrival who has looked like a definite upgrade so far.
Hearts need to get back in the habit beating teams. They won only one of their last six games last season so have recorded one win from ten competitive games. There have been encouraging periods. They were strong in the goalless draw with Rangers on the opening day, should have buried chances before conceding to Falkirk, and were composed and competitive against Viktoria Plzen before Oyegoke’s really unlucky own goal cost them the game in the 96th minute.
Tynecastle will be raucous on Thursday night to see if they can overturn that in the second leg. The Europa League group stage would be prestigious, and with eight games it would keep them in Europe until January with four home matches guaranteed.
The obvious negative is the prospect of being out of their depth and exposed. If they were to instead drop to the Conference League, the smaller participation fee could be equalised by better results and higher performance payments. It should not be beyond them to get enough points to finish in one of the top 24 positions of the new 36-team “league” format — meaning they would progress to the round of 16 play-off and would have a fourth home game and European football after Christmas after all.
St Mirren’s elimination and both Kilmarnock and Hearts losing their first legs on Thursday did nothing to advance Scotland’s co-efficient. The country is on course to lose its automatic access to all three European competitions, with four — reduced from the present five — entrants all having to come through three qualifying rounds next year. Other than Celtic and Rangers, no Scottish club has ever made it through two qualifying rounds to reach the groups.
For all of its accompanying demands and its need to bulk up squad sizes, guaranteed group football has been lucrative and exciting for Aberdeen and Hearts and refreshing for Scottish football overall. It has been a brief period in the sunshine that will be badly missed.