Gary Mackay: Engine room needs to be more creative at Tynecastle

I DON'T think anybody saw that result coming yesterday. After our last two games there was a real expectation among most Hearts fans that we could make it three in a row ahead of the derby on Sunday.

In saying that, anyone who's seen Kilmarnock this season will know they have been playing some really good football without getting what they deserve. But yesterday they got their reward for an outstanding performance. They really were excellent, while Hearts never got going.

Yesterday's display got me thinking about the Adrian Mrowiec-Eggert Jonsson central midfield pairing. I can see the importance of having two combative, defensive-minded players like Mrowiec and Jonsson in the engine room for away matches because they can break the play up and get the ball moved quickly on to the more creative players so we can hit teams on the break.

But yesterday I didn't feel it worked well. I can't blame the management at all because Mrowiec and Jonsson had done well at Aberdeen and it didn't do any harm playing the two of them against St Mirren either. Any player will tell you that they expect to keep their place if they're part of a winning team so no-one was complaining when Jim Jefferies listed an unchanged team for the third game running.

But where we seemed to lack creativity in midfield, it makes you think there might be a bit of value in having a home team and an away team. It's easy to say in hindsight, but I feel in a game like yesterday's we might have been better served by playing either Ian Black or Ryan Stevenson. Those two players might not have the combative qualities of Jonsson or Mrowiec, but in a home game I would expect them to be more liable to get on the ball in midfield and use it creatively to try and unlock a well-organised defence like that of Kilmarnock's.

Not much was happening in the first half so the manager made a couple of changes at half-time. Craig Thomson came on for Darren Barr and gave us more forward momentum down the right, but I was a bit surprised that Calum Elliot was taken off as early. He wasn't at his most productive in the first half, but I thought he might have got a little bit of the second half to try and make an impact.

His replacement, Stephen Elliott, had a few moments in the second half where he looked sharp, but he's certainly not match fit yet. And I'm still not convinced that Kevin Kyle is at full match fitness either. I've not watched Kevin over a period of time in his career, so it may be that this is as fit or mobile as he's going to get, but I'd like to think there might be a bit more to come from the big man.

I suppose the only slight blessing is that there won't be as much expectation going into the derby.

Had Hearts won yesterday, there would have been a huge level of expectancy on the players, but the fact we lost so heavily kind of levels it off a wee bit. Before yesterday's game I think every Hearts fan would have been confident about going down to Easter Road and winning but after losing it makes it more of a 50/50 flip-of-a-coin scenario because of Hibs having home advantage. Despite yesterday's defeat, we can go across the city with plenty of confidence as we still have a really good away record while Hibernian, like ourselves, have struggled on home soil over the past six months or so.