Hearts: Can Craig Levein improve upon sixth place this season?
- Published
Hearts fans have not been impressed with consecutive sixth-place finishes
Hearts manager Craig Levein is all too aware of the need to hit the ground running this season. "I understand why people get angry if we're not winning all the time," he said.
However, after two consecutive sixth-place finishes for his team in the Scottish Premiership, Levein knows that fans will demand better this time around.
An opening-weekend loss at Aberdeen was not a particularly auspicious start, but can the Tynecastle side improve or are Hearts destined for another disappointing league campaign?
Ominous signs in League Cup
If Levein had any intention of proving that this season would be different from the last, things quickly took a worrying turn in Hearts' four Scottish League Cup group-stage games.
Although Hearts ultimately finished top of their group, they managed to do so in spite of failing to beat Championship side Dundee United and League One outfit East Fife.
And there were plenty of concerning trends throughout each match. For example, Levein's strikers still can't score goals. Despite spending 490 minutes on the pitch between them, Uche Ikpeazu, Steven MacLean and new signing Conor Washington all failed to score against lower-league opposition.
On that evidence, there is very little to suggest MacLean or Ikpeazu are ready to add to the unimpressive 15 goals they scored between them last season. Or that Washington can to inject some much-needed accuracy up front in their stead.
Ikpeazu and Washington both played at Pittodrie on Sunday without scoring, but Steven Naismith did register his first goal of the campaign.
Hearts lost in a League Cup penalty shootout to East Fife last weekend
New solutions for old problems?
Last summer, Hearts signed 16 players. The year before, they brought in 13. Since the end of last term, though, Levein has picked up just four players and opted for quality over quantity to try to fix the issues his squad has faced over the past 12 months.
Despite having a reputation for being a conservative coach, Levein's Hearts had a dreadful defensive record last season - only four Premiership sides conceded more goals. And that is why Craig Halkett has been brought in and quickly fitted into the back line.
Last season the 24-year-old blocked 21 shots in the Premiership - only three players fared better - and won 64% of his aerial duels at the centre of a resolute Livingston defence. He was also fifth in the division for interceptions and, as Hearts fans have already noticed, he was a strong aerial threat in the opposing box, too.
With just 14 goals in 98 games for Queens Park Rangers and none in 16 for Sheffield United, expecting goals from Washington is perhaps unrealistic, but the return of Naismith and Jamie Walker should help on that front.
Last season, Naismith scored 24% of Hearts' league goals and the club's points per game dropped from 2.05 to 0.63 when he didn't play. Two seasons prior to that, Walker scored 22% of his side's league goals and he also scored against Aberdeen on Sunday. In both players, Levein may hope to find goals to compensate for a lack of firepower up front.
Getting the best of the rest
Levein knows Hearts should be challenging for third place in the Premiership this season and if he hopes to alleviate himself from persistent criticism at Tynecastle, that is what they' will need to do.
To do so, they will have to better Aberdeen and city rivals Hibernian. Levein's side had a poorer offensive and defensive record than both last time around, but where Hearts really dropped off was in their head-to-head record against other top-six sides.
For example, of the 63 points Hearts dropped, 43 - or 63% - came against the top six. They picked up three points against Celtic, five against Hibs and failed to take a point from Rangers in four attempts.
Perhaps the new signings can provide the kind of individual talent that will propel Hearts forward in these matches - and certainly Naismith and Walker helped on Sunday - but there's no way to know for sure how it will pan out over the campaign.