Yet another loss to Celtic has left Hearts fans infuriated with their tactics

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The Hearts supporters have unsurprisingly been left infuriated after again coming up short against Celtic in a crucial Premiership encounter.

Hearts’ 2-1 win over the Hoops back in August feels a long time ago now. Since then, they’ve lost 3 consecutive matches to Ange Postecoglou’s side. The first being a 3-2 League Cup win in which Celtic dominated at Parkhead, before Hearts returned to Glasgow for league duty in a 1-0 defeat.

Last night, however, was perhaps the most painful 90 minutes of them all for the Jambos support. Having slashed Celtic’s ticket allocation and looking to narrow the gap on us at the top of the Premiership, Hearts had an expectation heading into last night.

Yet they would instead be absolutely dominated in the first half as Celtic race into a 2-0 lead and controlled the midfield battle. The likes of Reo Hatate and Matt O’Riley consistently found space in the engine-room, whilst Carl Starfelt and Cameron Carter-Vickers barely made any mistakes due to easily dealing with Hearts’ passive press.

Things did change in the second half as Beni Baningime added some real aggression into their midfield for the final half-hour. This led to more turnovers as Celtic started to get a bit sloppy and tired in possession. However, despite being gifted an offside goal and a penalty, Hearts still couldn’t take advantage as Celtic left Gorgie with maximum points.

Celtic ended up seeing Hearts off comfortably in the end

Yes, there was some added bite to Hearts in the second half. But even then, Joe Hart didn’t have a single save to make after the goal. His action was limited to gathering cross-balls and distributing it out from the back.

For all of Hearts’ added intensity in that period, we were still relatively comfortable. You could see the Celtic players tiring in the closing stages, which is perhaps a slight concern. But even then we had the players on the bench to come on and ensure we ticked over until full-time.

As for Robbie Neilson, he’s picked up an unwanted reputation of failing to have a go at Celtic and Rangers. Hearts fans believe he’s too often determined to just stay in the game instead of getting in their faces from the off. That’s perhaps a touch unfair given Hearts actually started brightly in the opening 10 minutes.

The truth is they were just outclassed with 2 moments of sheer brilliance being the difference. Hearts just can’t compete with that, regardless of how they approach games against us.

And many of their supporters certainly weren’t happy with how last night panned out either. Here’s a look at some of their reaction on Twitter:

In other news, Giorgos Giakoumakis admits he “needed” his big Celtic moment at Tynecastle