After a disappointing couple of weeks, we face a tough trip to the Capital tomorrow to take on table-toppers Hearts at Tynecastle.
Although the Jambos have had some surprising results in recent weeks, only winning two out of their last seven games, dating back to the 1-1 draw at Palmerston. The biggest shock of the run came on Tuesday night as Robbie Neilson’s side were knocked out of the Scottish Cup by Brora Rangers in one of the biggest shocks in the competition’s history.
That won’t make our task any easier though, we haven’t won at Tynecastle since 1963 in the old Division 1, 11 years before Allan Johnston was even born! The last meeting in Edinburgh between the sides finished in a resounding 6-1 win for the hosts with Ayo Obileye scoring Queens’ only goal.
The same man scored when the sides met at Palmerston as we looked destined for a famous win, only for Liam Boyce to score a late equaliser from the penalty spot. Obileye sits two goals behind Boyce on the Championship top scorers chart.
The Jambos will be without Craig Gordon and Michael Smith with the pair on international duty this week – Liam Boyce pulled out of the Northern Ireland squad although is expected to be fit to feature on Saturday. Goalscoring left-back Stephen Kingsley will also likely be missing for the hosts, although John Souttar returned to the bench against Brora after a lengthy spell out injured.
It’ll be a similar squad to the one that lost at Cappielow for us. Saturday might come too soon for Joe McKee and Dan Pybus and Isaiah Jones will definitely miss out.
Looking ahead to the game, Manager Allan Johnston said “Our performance at Morton last week was a real surprise. We have been playing really well but we never got going at Cappielow. It was a missed opportunity as we had a chance to climb the table and put pressure on the teams above, so it’s really disappointing as both individually and collectively, we were miles off it.
We have six games left so we must treat them as though they are six cup finals. We need to get as many points as possible because we want to be challenging for the top four if we can. We have got to focus on ourselves, we must get back to winning ways and put in performances to get results again.
Hearts are champions in waiting there is no doubt about that, they had a disappointing result during the week, and they will be smarting from it and will have a point to prove. But these are the games we want to play in, they won’t be the ones that define our season, but we must go there looking to win.
The last time we played at Tynecastle it was a big learning curve for us but we have improved a lot since then and showed we can compete with them as we were unlucky not to take all three points in our meeting at Palmerston”.
The match will be streamed live on https://heartstv.heartsfc.co.uk/ppv-option for £18.50.
Kick off 3pm.