Hibs 1 Hearts 0 – Nisbet scores in front of Steve Clarke as hosts spoil Naismith’s debut in first derby win since 2019
IT’S just as well Stevie Naismith doesn’t think third place is the be all and end all.
Because right now, there’s less of Hearts getting it than he has of growing a mullet.
On a day when a first derby defeat in ten left them five points off Aberdeen, the Jambos were quite simply second best.
For the SIXTH game on the spin.
And as Kevin Nisbet’s second half volley set the Easter Road hordes off into full Sunshine on Leith mode, the bitter truth is that there’s nothing but gloom over Gorgie this morning.
They came here off the back of emptying gaffer Robbie Neilson and agreeing to let playmaker Robert Snodgrass tear up his contract. They’d rolled the dice knowing this capital showdown was a must-win and then some.
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But as former Scotland striker Naismith stepped into the dugout, it soon became clear that no amount of soul-searching and restructuring would be enough to turn this slump in form around.
Not while the players out on the pitch are as far off the pace as this lot have been week after week at the business end of the season.
Perfect example?
Inside ten minutes, Hibs centre back CJ Egan-Riley gets himself booked for a clumsy lunge at Barry Mckay. Less than five minutes later, he’s lucky as hell not to pick up a second yellow after cementing Jorge Grant.
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Surely the tactic from that moment was simple – badger him, bully him, over-run him until he’s worn down into into the challenge that gets him sent off.
You’d think.
Yet instead, they somehow chose to sit off the on-loan Burnley man, to let him recover his composure and stroll through the afternoon until he was subbed in the dying few minutes.
That’s Hearts on this losing streak, a shadow of the streetwise gang who’d confirmed third by this time last season by beating their arch-rivals and who followed that win up by turning them over again in the Scottish Cup semis a week later.
Hibs couldn’t live with them back then, or two previous meetings this season which ended in 3-0 canings. But yesterday, a few scrambles around the six-yard box aside., they never looked like going under.
In Jake Doyle-Hayes, they had a midfielder who was the best man on the park by some distance.
In Paul Hanlon, they had a defensive leader who controlled things at one end then went up the other to set up the winner.
In Nisbet, they had a predator who only needed one golden invitation from Hanlon’s knockdown to seal the deal and send three sides of this place wild.
Most importantly, though. in every area of the park, they won their individual battles – and as we’ve kept hearing from Hearts players and coaches in recent weeks, if you don’t do that you ain’t going to win big games.
The fact that bulleting Neilson did nothing to change that here tells its own story. Sure, he wasn’t getting a tune out of them, but you wonder who could with the mess their heads appear to be in.
One thing was for sure. All of Naismith’s leaping and barking and narking – he and opposite number Lee Johnson were both booked early in the second half after one growling match too many – had no effect whatsoever.
They cobbled up chances here and there, Alan Forrest dragging one wide early on then second half sub Steven Humphrys smashing one against David Marshall from a tight angle, but there was no flow, no style, no pace or power or even a genuine plan.
Even when the sheer bloody-minded persistence of skipper Lawrence Shankland earned them a free-kick kick on the edge of the box deep in stoppage time, you doubt if there was an away fan behind Marshall’s goal who genuinely believed the equaliser was coming.
A year ago, Stephen Kingsley was smashing set-pieces like these in the top corner with his eyes shut. Now, he half-hit it into the wall and when it broke to Mckay his follow-up effort wouldn’t have knocked the skin off a rice pudding.
By the time the loose ball had been blootered halfway to Leith Docks, he away end was already emptying – and the deejay was already queing up the tune Hibees boss Johnson admits he’d dreamed of hearing sung live.
What a feeling it must have given him as he strolled around the pitch with his players, applauding the fans and taking in the moment.
Because make no mistake, had this one gone the other way the noise would have been all about his job; how could it not be when the guy across the city was losing his dropping down to fourth?
Now, though, he goes into the last game before the split knowing his side can still go ABOVE Hearts, a prospect that not so long ago seemed an impossible dream.
The odds are stacked against it. But the way the Jambos are playing, who’d risk two bob on them winning at home to Ross County next week?
It seems only yesterday that they were seven points clear of the side in fourth and ten ahead of a Dons outfit in crisis.
Why and how it’s all gone so horribly wrong is the question no one from Ann Budge down seems able to answer.
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They’d better find that answer, though. And quick.
Or Steven Naismith will soon come to realise he’s the ONLY one playing that third place finish down.
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