Hearts’ boss Gary Locke insists that his players will have to improve on last week’s form if they are to take anything from Rugby Park on Saturday.
Speaking at the weekly press conference ahead of the game, Locke said: “I wish I could put my finger on what went wrong last week. I think just too many players didn’t turn up on the day. Motherwell is a difficult place to go, against a good side, and as much as they were very good, we were poor. I don’t think you can say this season that there have been many times that we have given up the ghost: we’ve put everything into most of the games. Last week was a game that you get every now and again. The team just didn’t play well on the day. I won’t make excuses, we weren’t good enough and that’s the reason we got beat.
“This week we have to do better. Kilmarnock are a similar side to Motherwell – a strong spine to their side, good experience and they can cause you problems if you don’t do your own job. We have worked as hard as possible this week – albeit there have been a few away with Scotland – and it is a game we need to try and win. You’re not going to win a game if only two or three players are on their game.”
“Kilmarnock have beaten us twice, and convincingly at Tynecastle, so we know how difficult it is going to be and we will certainly need to do better than we did last week. If we can achieve that then hopefully we get the right result.
“In the last couple of months the performances have certainly improved and got better and I’m hoping that last week was a blip, one game in the last seven or eight where we didn’t play well. And the good thing about football is you have another game which comes quickly and hopefully we get a better performance and better result.”
Hearts remain bottom of the table 20 points adrift.
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
