Dry January is over but mortified Stephen Kingsley admits the Hearts support have every right to reach for the boos after his side’s ‘embarrassing’ Dundee defeat.
Robbie Neilson’s third force failed to win for the fourth time in five games as they slumped against James McPake’s men at Tynecastle on Wednesday.
The Gorgie outfit were looking to bounce back after being spanked for five by Rangers.
They looked to have shaken off that Ibrox annihilation when Ellis Simms fired Neilson’s men in front midway through the first half but Hearts let their levels drop at the break and were stung by Danny Mullen’s double.
The result saw Dundee climb off the bottom but the Tynecastle faithful weren’t impressed and blasted Neilson and his players on their way down the tunnel.
And Kingsley said: “Yeah, don’t really want to say much about it to be honest.
“It’s an embarrassing result at home against a team bottom of the table.
“We know the levels we can hit and there were times in the first half where we created some chances, but when you concede two goals like that in the second half and losing at Tynecastle to the side bottom of the table, it’s just not good enough for this club, or for the levels that we hold here in this squad.
“We’ll definitely put it right on Saturday against Livingston in the Scottish Cup. We look to put these games to bed, try find out where we went wrong and move on.”
Asked if the fans were right to boo the team off, he added: “Absolutely. We hold ourselves accountable. We have standards of our own and we know what the standards of the club are, what the fans expect from us and as I said it’s an embarrassing result for us.
“We need to get to grips with what’s happened, move on and put it right on Saturday, because that’s a big chance to do well in the cup, so we need to get ourselves sorted and get going again for that.”
Neilson denied his side are sitting in a limbo land with their 10-point lead in third place but no hope of catching the Old Firm pacesetters earlier this week.
And Kingsley insists no-one is taking their European slot for granted.
The defender said: “No, that’s the mentality that we’re trying to make sure we don’t have.
“We’re 10 points clear, but we can’t afford to take our foot off the gas. You could say that looking at results, we’ve given teams below us the chance to catch up, but luckily the results have gone our way.
“It’s absolutely not good enough to be picking up results like that. We’re bitterly disappointed with the result and scoreline against Rangers and it was a chance to give a reaction and show the fans a reaction.
“Periods of the first half we were creating chances, but at the end of the day when you concede two goals like that it doesn’t matter.”
Kingsley hopes this weekend’s Scottish Cup clash against Livi will allow Hearts to reset and go again.
“That’s football,” he explained. “Thankfully, you always have that chance to put it right.
"As I’ve said, we’ve got standards here and they’ve not been where we want them to be, so thankfully there’s another game on Saturday, which we’ll need to be up for and apply the things we’ve not done right tonight on Saturday.”
