Battle of the reds at Tynecastle   

It's off to the capital this weekend as in the red Hearts take on red card Inverness.

Vladimir Romanov has slapped a £50m price tag on the maroons allegedly, and when asked again he retorted "that's five zero"; let's hope that's not the scoreline this Saturday.

Inverness were involved in headlines themselves after last weekends game with Celtic when bemused midfielderGreg Tansey was sent packing after challenging for a high ball with Celtic's Greek striker Georgios Samaras.  This was the third controversial sending off for the Caley Jags this season, and each one has cost the club dearly in terms of points lost.  Greg's alleged crime was for elbowing the Greek, in the opinion of referee Steven O'Reilly, who was the only person in front of a few million watchers who saw the incident that way.  It was no more than a careless challenge as Tansey's finger tips caressed the hirsute Samaras' cheek and long flowing locks, ooerr Greg, steady on.

Inverness fan Donnie Matheson of D&E Coaches felt so aggrieved by this decision he contacted the club and offered to pay the costs of an appeal to help offset any outlay incurred, a fantastic gesture from this committed fan, even from his sunbed in Lanzarote.

The appeal was discussed on Thursday by the beaks at Hampden, and knock me down with a feather, but it was successful as referee O'Reilly agreed with the rest of the world that he had made an error, having seen footage that vindicated Tansey.  This means that Greg will be free to play if selected at Tynecastle and he never even received a yellow for the challenge...... nuff said. 

However, let's just be happy that this dream that Yngwie had never materialised:-  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

The SFA is delighted to confirm that the red card issued to the player will not be overturned, and our only regret is that we can’t somehow pin this one on Ross Tokely. And believe me, we tried.  The referee’s match report noted that the Highland thug launched a rapid and unprovoked assault on poor Georgios Samaras comprising an elbow in the face, followed by a double uppercut, a karate kid style crane kick and then to add insult to injury, a humiliating wedgie. Brave Georgios was miraculously able to continue with the game after only a few minutes rolling around clutching his battered face.  The speed of the attack on Samaras was too fast to be properly recorded by any recording equipment present at the crappy little ground, but still images captured clearly show Tansey “looking at him in a funny way” followed a few seconds later by the victim having more than one hair out of place. The referee has provided some crayon sketches to fill the gaps, which conclusively prove his version of events. 

On the plus side, one of our forum users was almost added to the beaks committee.........We also considered an application to join the panel from a Mr DalneighCaley, but internet research revealed his opinions on the incident were far too sympathetic and reasoned to be suitable for us. But we did like his point that Butcher himself used the term “assault” and gave him a much needed green dot. Blimey, that poor fella’s picked up more reds than ICT.  (any similarity to persons and events elsewhere are purely coincidental and nobody was injured in the making of this dream).........ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Wake up Yngwie!

It's all happening down Tynecastle way just now.  Players not being paid on time, hints at a player cull being on the horizon and news that Romanov will sell the club or take on a new investment partner, have unsettled the Hearts fans.  All this in the face of a £33m tax bill does not make for encouraging reading for the rest of Scottish Football.  When clubs like Hearts are struggling to make ends meet, it's comforting to know that some are willing to live within their means to achieve relative success. 

Success is what you make of it, expectations are a dangerous thing and failure to meet expectations can ruin a club.

Some light relief was unveiled for the 7th of January as Inverness received the Parfect draw in the Scottish Cup 4th round.  The only all SPL tie as they were paired with fellow SPL strugglers Dunfermline Athletic.  Oh well, at least it is a home tie, but after witnessing the performance against the Pars in the last SPL game in Inverness, not a forgone conclusion that we will overcome them in the Cup.  Contrast this with Junior Football side Auchinleck Talbot being Hearts opponents at Tynecastle:  Aye, that's the romance of the Scottish Cup.

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Alternative Maryhill tries his hand at his first Tynecastle preview and has plenty of ammo to whet your appetite.....

 Heart of Midlothian v Inverness Caledonian Thistle, 26th November 2011

Heart of Midlothian. A name which, when first heard, must be one of the most romantic-sounding anywhere in football. Yet its origins are anything but. The name was first coined ironically to describe Edinburgh’s tolbooth prison, which stood for nearly four centuries beside St Giles’ on the Royal Mile and was notorious as a place of execution and torture, with spikes adorning the outside walls to display the heads and body parts of its most recent victims. In his 1818 state-of-the nation novel The Heart of Midlothian, Sir Walter Scott tried to rehabilitate the name by using it to describe his heroine Jeannie Deans, the humble cow-feeder’s daughter who is supposed to symbolise the innate virtue of the Scottish people, but who is in reality one of the most annoyingly pious characters ever to have made it onto a page. There is no clear consensus over whether the football club of the same name founded in 1874 took its name from the prison or the novel, and Hearts today seem to embody aspects of each: the torture of sitting through 300-odd minutes since the team last scored; the ‘Hearts Legends’ banners of the likes of Steven Pressley and Paul Hartley leering from the floodlight stanchions like disembodied execution victims; and the smug self-regard of (some of) its supporters, who flood onto popular Scottish football websites and spray meaningless gifs all over them.

Recently, of course, the name has taken on a whole new set of associations, most of them related in some way to Hearts’ owner, the submarine-piloting, Loch-Ness-swimming, with-the-stars-dancing Vladimir Romanov. Hearts have boasted some interesting characters at boardroom level in the past, notably Wallace Mercer, who madly tried to merge the club with Hibs, and rotund policeman-punching MP George Foulkes, but in his seven years in charge, Romanov has taken ‘interesting’ to a whole new level. Having arrived in Edinburgh claiming that he would make Hearts a team capable for challenging for the SPL title and European trophies, Romanov has worked his way through several hundred Eastern-European loan players and at least nine managers, the most successful of whom was sacked with the club sitting on top of the league and unbeaten after ten games, with rumours flying of Romanov trying to select the team himself; he has accused Hearts players of being targeted by ‘criminals’, ‘maniacs’ and ‘the mafia’, and the SFA and referees of waging a seven-year campaign against Hearts (no-one connected with ICT could ever be so paranoid...); and while taking the club into a debt of £30 million, with an outlay of a quarter of a million per week for wages whose payment is not always certain, he has presided over the winning of one trophy, via a penalty shoot-out against Gretna. Hardly Chelsea. In the past month, Romanov has announced that he wants out of Scottish football and that Hearts are up for sale at the knock-down price of £50 million. Surprisingly, potential buyers have not been knocking down his maroon doors...

So, with Hearts’ finances allegedly in disarray and future allegedly in doubt, should Caley Thistle be confident of beating them on Saturday? On the basis of history, probably not. In twenty league games, ICT have won only three times. Two of these were among the most entertaining and dramatic of the fixtures – a 2-1 win in Inverness in September 2007 with Craig Brewster scoring the winner in the final minute to end a season-opening sequence of six straight defeats, and a 3-2 win at Tynecastle three days before Christmas in the same year, when Graeme Bayne scored the winner in injury time after Hearts had equalised with a ninetieth-minute penalty – but the majority of games between the sides have been stupefyingly dull. Six of Hearts’ ten wins have finished 1-0, and there have been three 0-0 draws and four 1-1 draws, including the last three games between the sides. The odds on a fourth successive 1-1 are probably not particularly long.

Team News

With Thursday’s news that Greg Tansey’s red card against Celtic has been rescinded, Caley Thistle’s squad is probably as strong as it has been all season. Owain Tudur-Jones is still injured, and although Aaron Doran is thought to be back in training, this game will come too soon for him. Although the team created few clear-cut chances against Celtic, they played a lot of good football, and it is likely that Terry Butcher will pick the same team that started against Celtic: Esson in goals, Meekings, Hogg, Tokely and Gillet in defence, Davis and Tansey lying deeper in midfield and Tade at the head of what is approximately an attacking diamond also featuring Hayes, Andrew Shinnie and Foran.

The BBC has no up-to-date team news for Hearts, and trying to pick through the acres of gifs and Hibs-Hearts name-calling on P&B has simply become too tedious, so I have no clear idea of what Hearts’ player availability is like for Saturday. What is apparent, however, is that Hearts’ manager Paulo Sergio has aimed for more stability of team selection than Hearts have been known for in recent years. In their last four games, despite the team having lost three and drawn one without scoring a single goal, the team selection has been remarkably consistent: against Kilmarnock and Rangers the teams were identical; against St Mirren Ryan McGowan came in for the injured Danny Grainger and Mehdi Taouil for the suspended Ian Black; and against Dundee United Taouil was replaced by John Sutton. Having seen Sutton, David Templeton and Ryan Stevenson tear Caley Thistle defences apart at different times over the last few years, it seems amazing to me that Hearts have not scored in the league in 376 minutes; if they decide to start finding the net on Saturday, let’s hope that Shinnie, Tade and Hayes are in a Rugby Park kind of mindset...

Prediction

As always with ICT, who can say? This games pitches the second best defence in the league (Hearts, ten goals conceded) against the second worst (ICT, thirty goals conceded), and the team with the worst goal tally in the league (Hearts, thirteen goals scored) against the team with the sixth best (ICT, nineteen goals scored). Hearts’ form is dreadful, ICT’s is all over the place... I’m taking the easy option:

Heart of Midlothian 1, Inverness Caledonian Thistle 1

Latest Team News

Inverness will be without the long term casualties for another few weeks, although Owain Tudur-Jones is ahead of schedule and is training lightly.  Aaron Doran is also doing fitness training and both could feature early in the new year.  Nick Ross and Lee Cox can be added to the squad and it is now down to the managers discretion who to involve and who to leave out.  Horses for courses spring to mind.  Greg Tansey will be included in the squad after his successful appeal .  So, it could be along the same starting line up for Butcher's boys.

Hearts manager Paulo Sergio has plenty of issues going on in and around Tynecastle to contend with, including his own 5 match dugout ban which started last week at Tannadice.  Nineteen senior players are apparently out of contract this summer and that will make for uncertain times down Gorgie way, but nobody can doubt the talent that the club has on the field of play, with super talented kids like Ryan Stevenson and David Templeton at their disposal.  Nemesis, Kevin Kyle is out long term, and Darren Barr, Gary Glen, Suso Santana and Danny Grainger are all sidelined.  Former ICT midfielder Ian Black completes the last of his three match suspension today.

Other SPL News

Dunfermline failed to take advantage of their game in hand at the bottom of the table as they lost 2-1 to Celtic in midweek who have moved to only 7 points behind table toppers Rangers.  The Pars stay 1 point ahead of Inverness and Aberdeen at the foot of the league but their goal difference is now 4 worse than Inverness' tally.

Hibernian have confirmed that Pat Fenlon will take over the reins from Colin Calderwood and he has signed a two and a half year contract.  Forty two year old Fenlon arrives from Irish outfit Bohemians, who only managed fifth last year.  Fenlon played all of his senior career in Ireland.

Rangers have also confirmed a signing, that of former Aberdeen winger Sone Aluko who has signed on at Ibrox until the end of the season after agreeing compensation with the Dons.