Anger is an energy. It's a top line from a top song released the last year Hearts went on to lose a league title by goal difference on the final day. It's also an inalienable truth the Gorgie outfit should lean into heavily as they endeavour to make sure a dream season doesn't end with the ultimate nightmare again.
Injuries to key performers are biting once more. The gas in the tank is evidently running low. Celtic are back on their shoulder — just as they were in 1986 — after seeing off a Rangers side that was never going to help old boy Derek McInnes and his players when all they specialise in is collapsing like a tent in a typhoon.
Hearts need to dredge something up to get over the line here. It's all on their own shoulders. They can't even put their trust in match officials in this country to take care of high-stakes, campaign-defining games properly and get the big decisions right whether with VAR or without VAR. The last few days, as if they were needed, have shown that.
There was some real headscratching stuff from Nick Walsh and his team in today's Old Firm derby. Less than 24 hours earlier, in Hearts' 1-1 draw with Motherwell at Fir Park, referee Steven McLean just made an absolute ricket of it when failing to award the visitors a penalty — despite being sent to the monitor — on 66 minutes after substitute Alexandros Kyziridis had clearly been brought down in the area by Tawanda Maswanhise.
What Hearts need to do, though, is keep the burning sense of injustice from that flashpoint — which came after Lawrence Shankland had cancelled out a Stephen Kingsley own goal — close over the course of this momentous week ahead. Use it. Channel it the right way. Make it make them show the world that no one and nothing is going to stop them fulfilling their destiny.
Be sure, there was real fury that lasted long into the night over McLean's decision to deny them that one shot from 12 yards that would have afforded welcome breathing space. McInnes tried to play that down as he combed over the debris afterwards. He told McLean he'd had a poor night and admitted he was disappointed with the decision, but felt he had to move on from it. He stated that the dressing room was more disappointed than anything for Craig Halkett and Marc Leonard, both removed from the play with Achilles tendon injuries and now facing lengthy spells on the sidelines.
The body language of Kyziridis told a different story, though. He could barely contain his fury over what had just played out when he faced up to the media. As your old granny would say, he had a face like fizz. He's not having the suggestion it was anything other than a stonewaller. He's not having the suggestion he went down too easily or was too theatrical. From his perspective, Hearts got done and he made no secret of the fact he wants his revenge.
Put it this way, when Falkirk come calling on Wednesday night, he'd be a good bet for the starting line-up. Given the look in his eye here, the difficulty he had in keeping his emotions in check, his cortisol levels — the chemical that keeps the sense of anger raging along with the adrenaline and noradrenaline — would be capable of blasting away John McGlynn's men on its own.
Ask a number of Rangers fans, their own stress hormones going haywire right now for all manner of different reasons, and they'll tell you referees are convening to hand Celtic the championship. They'll point to incidents such as Alistair Johnston being allowed to stay on the pitch at Parkhead after jumping in on Mikey Moore and catching him on the shin. The fundamental issue, of course, is that our referees aren't up to the job and costly blunders are going to carry on happening unless someone does something meaningful about it. The title race was always going to end up with stuff like this.
However, if McInnes feels pinching a bit of this and that from the conspiracy theorists might help his team talks behind the scenes, he most definitely should go down that road. The Hearts manager knows the game well and has played this season perfectly. He knows the differences required between the public persona and the private one that manages his squad. He wanted to dial down the angry stuff after the Motherwell game and that's fine. He clearly wanted to exude a more positive approach rather than frame the dropping of two points at Fir Park as some kind of calamity.
It's understandable the loss of Halkett — a colossus at the back this season — might have been occupying his thoughts too as the prospect of having to go to Celtic Park on the final day with this title race still alive becomes ever more likely. McInnes should move towards that rage in the days ahead, though. Welcome it in and seek to make it a weapon. See if it can inject just that little extra oomph into the hearts and minds of players such as Claudio Braga, who are looking understandably jaded at the end of a campaign in which they have worked like Trojans.
Getting Mad and Getting Even was never a chapter in Dave Brailsford's Bumper Book of Marginal Gains, but, as Hearts embark upon a momentous week that is going to ask questions of everything they have within them, it might just work.
