At half time today on RS they were talking about Hearts and how despite been out in front the fans aren't happy with the football. Michael Stewart says the problem is they have no energy and teams that do well against them over run them and Hearts just cant get going. He could very well be talking about United under Neilson, strikingly so.
Its purely hypothetical to think where United would be if RN hadn't left but I have a feeling we wouldn't be sitting with that wee cushion from the relegation dogfight.
To be fair to RN, last time round he brought Hearts up and they were very strong in the Premiership, not just in their first season back but the next season too. And their decline has coincided with his then departure. It’s hard to tell absolutely how he would have fared with us this season. Who knows, he may have gotten the Nisbet deal over the line for instance, but otherwise it’s all conjecture. He made his decision, he went to Hearts and that’s that. I do still appreciate him getting us up and I really do think he should get a lot of credit for that despite his detractors - after all he did what Ray and Csaba tried and failed at miserably. But at the end of the day, he jumped ship and for better or worse, it is what it is so let’s just move on.
It’s funny how the hearts fans are so angry and dissatisfied
What did they expect - you can only win the league they are in
And they lost on penalties in the cup final.
Overall it’s the same as with united though it’s not a great style of play
I suspect Neilson would probably have us in fairly similar position in all honesty
In saying that got to give credit for Mellon coming in just before the season and hopefully keeping us up with some cushion
United of last season are better than this Hearts team
Struggled at ICT, we had the cigar out winning for fun in Inverness under Neilson against better sides than the current ict team who have lost a lot of players in recent times
In a non covid world, we'd have finished on a high after our lull, he'd had strengthened the team on the back of thy season ticket sales, the big crowds we'd have had all season and imo would have saw us get top 5/6, dying think he'd have left for hearts
We have been badly affected by covid, all clubs who were doing well have been affected more than those who were struggling or just average
Things changed so much for us as we were on such a high overall as a club, the crowds home and away our first season back would been mental, think 96/97 kinda vibe
Hence I'm giving melon plenty leeway as he took over in difficult circumstances and staying up well now than do, comfortable mid table looking like just now
Neilson is doing at Hearts pretty much exactly what he did at United. Winning the league with a much higher budget than his competitors with football and tactics that has a large section of the support unhappy.
I always felt he was a good man manager that the players liked, but a hopeless coach. That makes him bang average imo. Will be interesting to see how his side gets on next year.
We were better last year than them and 6 pts better off at the equivalent 18 game mark
Our record was 15 wins 3 defeats and 45 pts
They will do fine next year, maybe not as good as the last time he got them up, then got them 3rd first season and were 2nd half way thru the season he left but were some big clubs missing with just Celtic and Aberdeen to contend with
Different division next season as will be the first season since 2011/12 that Celtic, a version of Rangers, Aberdeen, Hearts Hibs and United will all be in the top flight together, before then it had been a given which made our success of those years all the better