Frustration & anger as derby defeat leaves season a dead rubber
· Yahoo Sports
It's hard to convey the feelings I had coming out of Easter Road on Sunday.
There was definitely disappointment, some pride in the performance of the nine men that stayed on the pitch, frustration at the two red-carded players, and anger at a referee that just would not pull out a yellow card for a Hearts player unless he was flashing one at a Hibs players at the same time.
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It's a recurring pattern - Hearts avoided a single booking in their 1-0 win in the previous derby, as they did in the 3-2 defeat to Hibs in December, and were able to foul at will on Sunday without consequence.
I'll have folk shouting about conspiracies etc, but I'll just share that in the four derbies this season, Hearts have been afforded 9.4 fouls per booking, while Hibs get just 5.4.
This isn't about blaming a referee - Don Robertson got the two big calls correct by the letter of the law.
Raphael Sallinger's rush of blood to the head was symptomatic of the nervy start Hibs made. Unforced error after unforced error blighted our play yet we found ourselves ahead thanks to Martin Boyle, playing his last derby for Hibs.
Boyle was outstanding and didn't deserve to find himself on the losing team.
Felix Passlack's second yellow was also a clear booking, the frustration here is not that he was booked and subsequently ordered off for it, it's that the referee chose that bookable offence to pull out a card.
Where was that diligence for the rest of the game? Passlack can have no complaints, though.
Ultimately, Passlack and Sallinger gave their team-mates an almost impossible task to hold on to the lead and we very nearly did it. I don't have any doubt that if we had even stayed at 10 men we'd have won.
For Hibs, the season is pretty much a dead rubber now - I doubt we'll catch Motherwell and I think we'll stay clear of Falkirk, so our hopes rest on Celtic winning the Scottish Cup to hand us European football.
Ultimately the season hasn't been good enough. Malky Mackay has to look long and hard at the January recruitment and why it hasn't lifted the team for the run-in, while David Gray must reflect on why teams are finding us so predictable to play against and why results are not going our way now.