Hearts B were defeated 2-0 by Albion Rovers at Cliftonhill Stadium on Saturday.
Goals from Chris Neeson and Tylar Denholm secured the three points for The Rovers in what was a frustrating afternoon for Hearts.
The Wee Jambos went on the attack early on in the Coatbridge sunshine.
16-year-old Liam Walker was played in behind The Rovers defence, and calmly slotted home, but he went too early as the referee blew his whistle for offside.
On 14 minutes, Callen Robb was found free in the box, he shifted the ball on to his left foot and hit a strike which was gathered by Albion Rovers goalkeeper Alfiie Halliwell.
Despite a promising start from the young Jambos, the hosts took the lead in the 24th minute. The free-kick was whipped in from the right and Christopher Neeson headed home past Tas for 1-0.
The Jam Tarts looked to respond immediately. Tommy North drove into the box and played it to Robb who hit one first time but it was a comfortable take for Halliwell.
Half-time: Albion Rovers 1-0 Hearts
Albion Rovers doubled their advantage on 66 minutes. There was a bit of confusion amongst the Hearts defence as the linesman had his flag up and Jack Lyon stopped running out, which allowed Denholm to slot home into the bottom corner for 2-0.
Hearts had a decent opportunity to half the deficit on 73 minutes. Lucas Smith whipped in a great cross from the left to find Dow, he took a touch before striking one, but his effort was blocked and cleared from danger.
The Wee Jambos huffed and puffed but couldn’t mount a late fightback as Albion Rovers went on to secure all three points in Coatbridge.
Speaking to the Official Hearts Website at full-time, assistant manager David McNeil said:
“ It was an extremely frustrating performance today. Too many turnovers for our liking. When we seem to regain the ball, we turn it over, which would lead to a throw-in to Albion, a corner to Albion, and moments that we're still really developing.
“So extremely frustrating, we don't create enough in front of goal, we don't play through the thirds well enough, a lack of quality. When we do seem to win the ball back, it was going out the pitch. It was going back to them, passes, dribbles, yeah. There were a lot of frustrating bits to today's performance.”
“The frustration is the bits that we looked at through the week of connecting through the 10s and then wide or doubling up in the middle and overloading the middle, we've seen two or three glimpses of that in the first half. And when they got that right, we looked threatening and we got a couple of attacks from that, just didn't see it enough.”
McNeil reflected on the confusion surrounding The Rovers’ second goal of the afternoon.
“It was frustrating at the time, the ref explained that the linesman had flagged. From the bench we thought we'd seen a pull on Alfie, the ref also saw Alfie pulling. So he says, look, six and two three are both at it, played on, learning curve for the players again, that we need to play right through because we stopped at that moment and the second goal goes in. At that moment, again, we hadn't quite got in a rhythm, but there was still a decent period of time left in the game.”
The assistant manager looked ahead to Tuesday night’s league match against Civil Service Strollers at the Vanloq Community Stadium- Ainslie Park.
“The message there to the players was that the quality was nowhere near the level we expect here today. They're going to have to go away and reflect, look at the turnovers, look at how many forward passes they play, key passes, and there's things they need to bring back to the training pitch on Monday and get back to it on Tuesday against Civil.”
Albion Rovers: Halliwell, Bowie, Reid ©, Neeson, Hunter, Denholm, McColl, Marchant, McMillan, Ellis, Lumsden
Subs: Gaffney, Campbell, Duffy, Thomson, Brown, Garth, Duncan
Hearts: Tas (Lyon, 55’), Crookston ©, James (Smith, 70’), Osborne, Dow, Glasgow, Sanders (Hogarth, 70’), S. Wilson, Walker (Dickov, 81’), Robb (Ross, 70’), North
Subs: Lyon, Smith, Ross, Hogarth, Dickov
