{"id":406919,"date":"2026-02-04T06:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/406919\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T06:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:31:10","slug":"playing-with-fire-catches-up-with-10-man-hearts-mcinnes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/406919\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Playing with fire&#8217; catches up with 10-man Hearts &#8211; McInnes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former Hearts forward Ryan Stevenson: &#8220;Everyone will look back at the sending off as the pivotal moment. From minute one was pivotal. The way they started the game, it&#8217;s the first time I&#8217;ve seen them this season as bad as that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The sending off was calamitous. In that video meeting, watching it back, they&#8217;ll be cringing. There were so many wrong decisions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was so bad, all across the park. They never held the ball up up top, didn&#8217;t make runs in behind to ask questions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They were so passive, St Mirren won every second ball that bounced in the middle of the park.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It happens. Everybody will jump on the bandwagon and say &#8216;this is it, they&#8217;re stuttering&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They&#8217;ve never been in this position. It&#8217;s been 40 years since Aberdeen were in this position, none of us are used to this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If I were Derek McInnes I&#8217;d be saying &#8216;you&#8217;ve got the weekend off, what a game to bounce back in with the derby on Tuesday night&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s still in their hands. You can&#8217;t be doom and gloom about it because they have to brush themselves down and go again but they cannot let that performance happen again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former St Mirren striker Steven Thompson: &#8220;There&#8217;ll be huge twists and turns before the end of the season. Tonight is a blip for Hearts, but it&#8217;s difficult to win every game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Between now and the end of the season, a Motherwell or someone else is taking points off Rangers, Celtic and Hearts. They&#8217;ll take points off each other.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Hearts have set such a high bar and it was strange to be so far off it. Sometimes, when you&#8217;re not playing well as a team, you can carry two or three passengers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Tonight, there was far too many. It doesn&#8217;t happen often for this Hearts team but when it happens, you can&#8217;t win games.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Hearts forward Ryan Stevenson: &#8220;Everyone will look back at the sending off as the pivotal moment. From&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-406919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}