Celtic thrash Hearts: Wouter Vrancken tactics in spotlight

It is inarguable that Hearts players made bad decisions in big moments at a place where their title dreams crumbled last May.

Indeed, former Tynecastle defender Ryan McGowan suggested “a lot of players went missing” and that whatever instructions Vrancken gave them “went completely out their ears”.

Former Scotland striker Kris Boyd, though, was more astonished by how Hearts approached the trip to a venue where they won last autumn.

“I’ve never seen defending like that in all my life,” he said on Sky Sports. “Hearts are still trying to go toe-to-toe with Celtic on 89 minutes.

“You’ve got to pay respect to Celtic. If you go man-for-man, they will demolish you and that’s exactly what happened there.”

Halliday picked up that theme and suggested that Vrancken might benefit from adapting his preferred approach in circumstances such as these.

“There was no accountablity,” he added on Sportsound. “He was talking about players’ errors, rather than his own errors, which were pretty glaring for me.

“Anyone who’s watched Celtic this year will know they target the front post from set-pieces, but Hearts’ set up didn’t try to negate that.

“I’ve praised Vrancken to the hilt – and I still think they’ll finish in the top three – but my worry is if he had the opportunity to play that game again, I don’t think he’d do anything differently and what he said just proved that.”