Hearts v Hibs deep dive - the tactics and tweaks during chaotic derby.
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00:00 Hi folks, welcome back to Tactics Zone. A Derby special this week after a kind of
00:06 breathtaking 2-2 draw at Tyne Castle there. Plenty to get our teeth into.
00:13 Now you really couldn't separate the sides on most measures. Take a look at
00:18 that expected goals number 2.13 versus 2.11. That is mean. That's as close
00:24 to parity as you're ever going to see in that position 50/50 split. There's the
00:29 formations everyone saw. It was quite interesting. Hibs stuck with her 4-4-2.
00:33 Hartz went 4-2-3-1. And at number 10, or should I say number 51, Alex Lowry was
00:39 going to be key in the opening phases. Lowry just loved playing in between the
00:46 lines there. You can see the Hibs two banks of four. He's found space in behind
00:51 there. He did that all afternoon. This extended to the edge of the Hibs box
00:56 even. If you look here, look at all that space he's in to collect that ball.
01:01 That's where you would normally have maybe a number six in there picking him
01:05 up, blocking him, doing something, just marking the space even. He ends up with a
01:09 shot there. Bizarrely, even when Lowry was playing in front of the midfield for
01:18 Hibs, Joe Newell and Jimmy Jekyll, who were outnumbered for most of the game
01:22 just because of the way the formations shaped up. This instance here, they both
01:26 kind of back off Lowry. They don't want to engage him and he ends up picking a
01:29 really good pass for Vargas. So they were struggling to get to grips with him. With
01:35 the ball, Hibs were persistent playing from the back and worked pretty well for
01:39 them in terms of keeping the ball. David Marshall's getting much
01:42 better at it, using his feet. The centre-halves go really wide. The two
01:47 midfielders drop in. Hartz actually stepped off this. They didn't press an
01:50 awful lot. I think they knew they didn't want to waste their time and end up with
01:54 bodies out of position. Hibs' best chances in the first half were on the break.
02:00 You would get Boyle and Uhan combining and Hibs now have two players with real
02:04 pace. This one ends with Cami Devlin getting booked actually for a foul as
02:10 Boyle is just gone. Now the first Hartz goal, what a strike from Alan Forrest.
02:18 What a strike. Brilliant play, great to cut inside, an absolute screamer. We were
02:24 sitting right behind it. You could see it all the way. The thing from a defensive
02:28 point of view if you're a Hibs coach here is looking at that space. Again it's
02:32 that same space. Djegil or Newell or somebody needs to be just in that area,
02:37 almost marking the space, stopping him from driving in there and getting off
02:41 the shot. Start of the second half, Hibs did tweak things a little bit, drop Venti
02:48 back to help out Djegil and Newell. You can see them getting closer to Lowry here
02:53 and Hibs actually started the second half really well. Then of course football
02:59 being football, Hartz scored. A corner comes back to Lowry and it's just a
03:04 switch off. There's a little look between Uhan and Venti. Are you going to him? Am I
03:08 going to him? They both delay too long. It's a low hard cross into the box and
03:12 one of Pep Guardiola's coaches says that's already worth half a goal.
03:16 Poor Christian Deutch. So there was an element of chaos and drama and
03:25 everything there always are when you get two goals in whatever it was, 83 seconds
03:28 and a couple of lucky bounces maybe but look Hibs did the right thing to get
03:33 back into this game. They crowded that penalty area, they got players in and
03:38 around Venti who's trying to play a little pull through here for Uhan. It gets
03:42 a bounce and Uhan finishes. So they're rewarded for doing the right things and
03:46 the second goal, yep look Sivic should stick that into the stratosphere.
03:51 Absolutely no doubt about it. It's a low cross from Boyle. Instead he knocks out into the
03:56 worst possible area. That's where Uhan is running in. I've just highlighted
04:00 Beningame but it may not have been his job, it might have been somebody else's
04:03 job just to be in there and stop a winger or a midfielder running in to
04:08 take that shot. The game got pretty chaotic after the equaliser to be honest.
04:15 There were some crazy moments. I know this one here, I know it's a Hearts set
04:19 piece at the other end but how Hearts have left Uhan and Boyle free to run in
04:25 behind there with neither of the players left back marking them. It kind of summed
04:29 up how crazy it became. All in all 2-2. Don't really think either team could
04:38 complain about the result. Interesting to see how the coaches tackled
04:44 things. A lot of focus on Lowry coming off. Stephen Naismith makes the decision.
04:48 He's the coach, he sees him, he knows what his energy levels are, what he can do.
04:52 Had an impact but maybe not the defining impact. Anyway, interesting game. I will
04:58 look forward to the next one which is a couple of days after Christmas. Cheers!