Wouter Vrancken admitted his Hearts side were simply not good enough as they were beaten 3-1 away to Thun in the Europa Conference League. The injury-hit Jambos conceded too easily in Switzerland, with Thun picking up their first points in the competition.
Hearts now have one point from their first three games and need a significant turnaround in form to keep their European campaign alive. The defeat leaves the Edinburgh club under pressure heading into the next round of fixtures.
Vrancken's blunt assessment
Vrancken said: "Not good enough, simple in general."
"We had to play, we had to find our game, but when you saw it directly from the start, I don't know why, but we didn't have the confidence or so to find the spaces and use the spaces, because we knew that they wanted to press us and keep us on one side."
"The moments we got to change it, for example, we didn't take and then you're always in these moments, in duels and stuff like this, and then you have to man up to win it. That was also not good enough today."
Easy goals prove costly
The Belgian said his side never recovered from gifting two easy goals at the Visana Stadium. He added: "Then you get two easy goals, actually, and then it's really hard to find the extra energy again to win it."
"The moment that we could have had a penalty, then just a minute later or something like this, they scored the third one and like I heard just now, their guy (Dursan) who had to maybe send off before. It was not our night in decisions, but also we have to look at ourselves, the quality we brought."
"We expected more in the circumstances we are in, and change of positions, all those things, but we did it so many times that you always expect that it will return good and that everybody gets his level and finds his game in it, but today it was not good enough."
No blame for depleted squad
Vrancken refused to blame his squad, which is down to the bare bones. He stated: "No, no, not at all. I don't want to blame them also, because I think we were too easy in getting the goals and you expect always this intensity."
"It was also our game to put a lot of intensity in it, but I want to also defend them, because it's not always easy in the situation we're in, and playing every game like this and there's a run of games, so the thing that we have to do now is stick together, work hard, recover well from this game and go one time full (against Falkirk) before the break again."
Injury concerns and debut positive
Hearts are already into double figures with injuries, and that was added to as Stephen Kingsley limped out with a hamstring issue. Vrancken claimed: "Yes, it's always a risk."
"When you have this run of games, you take a risk with every player, but you have to put 11 players on the pitch, that's for sure."
"But no, we talked it through, of course, in the previous days, and he felt good, especially because he played a lot of games and came out really good."
"He was really confident that he could play. It's a pity, so we'll see. He's down, because he's mentally, of course, down, because he didn't expect it and he didn't want this to happen, of course. But it's always difficult directly after a game."
The one positive was the debut of youngster Matthew Gillies, who came off the bench. Vrancken admitted he could be kept in the squad rather than being sent back to Stenhousemuir.
The Hearts boss acknowledged: "It was a difficult moment, of course, but I think he did well for his first minutes."
"He tried to stay in position really good and play from there, so I was happy for him also that he could show himself a bit on this level."
