I certainly believe we'd have won more points under a better manager so who knows how things might have panned out. Even with McCoist in charge it could yet have gone for us but for one lunging tackle. After opening a gap in the first few weeks one thing that was mentioned a lot was how the Hearts players would cope under pressure, but we gave them the easiest of rides so they never had to find out. But if we'd kept 11 men on the pitch in the game at Tynecastle in November in which we were well on top, we could've taken the points and closed the gap to 3. Instead Smith got himself sent off, we lost the match, the gap jumped from 6 to 9 and the league was all but over. It was our squad that crumbled at that point and we didn't start to recover until the new year.
I'm not saying McCoist would have turned into a managerial genius overnight if we'd won that game, but our play had been improving from the opening of the season and if our players had managed to retain their self-belief I think we'd have won more points than we did in the weeks that followed. If there was one moment of the season that everything turned on, for me Smith's red card was it.
I'm not saying McCoist would have turned into a managerial genius overnight if we'd won that game, but our play had been improving from the opening of the season and if our players had managed to retain their self-belief I think we'd have won more points than we did in the weeks that followed. If there was one moment of the season that everything turned on, for me Smith's red card was it.