Alan and I discussed in last week’s Exta Time that we both saw a lot of similarities between how Sturm Graz played against Celtic and how we thought Hearts were likely to do so Sunday.
Despite the result and performance being very different than Thursday, i.e. both objectively poor, Hearts were actually worse than what I expected. I thought they would be materially better than Sturm Graz even if working off a comparable plan, but rather, we were just REALLY bad.
Here were 10 images from one sequence of play that to me signified how poor we were, and how much space Hearts’ setup provided if we had just not squandered it.
The relevant sequence began during the 29th minute:
We started our journey with Liam Scales on the ball with Callum McGregor inside and Reo Hatate directly ahead. Note the front six of Hearts were pretty well positioned within their 4-4-2 shape. McGregor’s on-again-off-again marker, Claudio Braga, was pulled towards Scales on the ball.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Huddle Breakdown to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.