Hearts 1-3 Rangers: The more things change, the more things stay the same

Morning everyone, Rangers "triumphed" at Tynecastle with a 3-1 win over a very unlucky Hearts side who will have felt they should have taken something from the game.

What to even say about that performance? I'll start with the line-up and the reaction. Tom Lawrence returned to the starting eleven for the first time in a few months. The short term thinking on show here was immediately highlighted by many fans. With nothing to play for, the Manager elected to start someone who won't be at the club in 4 months time.

I don't think this is that surprising. The board has been recruiting managers and players with such a short term view that we shouldn't be surprised when that thinking is echoed throughout the entirety of the club. And if all goes well Clement won't be here any longer than Lawrence, what's the incentive to play anyone who might improve us in future?

The other major issue at the moment is that it doesn't matter who Clement started yesterday, the fans wouldn't have been happy, because it's still Philippe Clement making that decision. Why would any fan of the club be happy with the Belgian doing anything when he's shown for a long time now he's not fit for purpose?

Once we'd all accepted that there would be no sacking with an hour to go till kick-off, thoughts started to turn towards the level of performance we'd see. It couldn't get worse than last week.

Defensively, it probably was worse than last week. Kabangu will have had a sleepless night as he really ought to have put the Jambos in-front early in the game. But with the goal seemingly at his mercy, his finish was poor and Butland saved well.

Butland saving our bacon was probably the key theme of the game. I could spend another thousand words just talking about the chances Hearts had. Truthfully we were indebted to a combination of poor finishing and a seeming return to form for Jack Butland for getting any kind of result.

Friend of the blog Patrick Caskie highlighted the sheer number of chances conceded yesterday and gave some helpful context as to just how bad it was.

I'm sure some will have plenty to say about xG as a concept. But even the biggest xG sceptic would agree that the eye-test matches up with the numbers here. Hearts passed through the Rangers midfield and defence. We saw Raskin and Diomande covering too much ground as usual, the distances between midfield and defence being far too large at times. All in all it made things easy for Hearts, truthfully I fear for the upcoming Old Firms if it's as bad as this set up wise.

I suppose I should talk about the Rangers goals now. Hagi had a hand in two own goals by Jamie McCart either side of a Cerny finish. The Romanian midfielders low cross was diverted into the Hearts net by McCart.

Hearts managed to get back on terms with a great header following an even better delivery from a corner.

Cerny got our noses back in-front after collecting a bouncing ball in the box and finishing well.

There was time for Jamie McCart to beat Dessers to a Hagi lobbed pass and proceed to lob his own goalkeeper.

Honestly there's not too much to say about the game aside from that. We should have lost, we won. It won't be long until that kind of statistical anomaly rights itself and we end up losing a game like this. Clement was really pleased with the performance post match, so there won't be any adjustments made until we see the kind of loss we deserved yesterday.

If you can't tell, things are at a real low point here. Hopefully by our next game I'll have perked up a little bit. Have a good day everyone.