ON the basis of the evidence offered by veteran midfielder Don Cowie, Hearts must overcome something of a crisis of confidence if they are to have any chance of playing European football this summer following their midweek defeat at St Johnstone.

The margin was just a single goal, but the Tynecastle side was wholly outplayed by a team whose disciplined aggression contrasted with their own niggliness that had resulted in a string of yellow cards even before the ugly incident that saw Sam Nicholson’s involvement of little more than quarter of an hour end when assistant referee Stephen Mitchell accused the second half substitute of spitting at him.

Nicholson subsequently denied any intent to do so and was defended by his callow manager, but even those of us who have maximum goodwill towards the courageous project that has seen Ian Cathro put in charge of their fortunes felt there was a danger that it could descend into disarray and Cowie seemed deeply aware of that danger.

“That’s just where we are right now, a bit vulnerable,” he said. “Confidence is obviously a bit low and you can see that when we’re playing. It’s tough times, but that’s football.”

That he is four years older than his boss would not be unusual in many walks of life, but it is in football and the former international player has vastly superior experience to draw upon from within the game too and admitted that the nature of the change of approach since Robbie Neilson left towards the end of last year, with the team then in second place in the league, has been telling.

“It’s tough. It’s well documented that there were a lot of changes in January and it’s not an excuse, that’s just what happened,” Cowie said.

“There’s a few different cultures, maybe used to playing in different environments so it’s just trying to get everyone together and pulling in the same direction. There’s no bad eggs or anything like that in the dressing room, it’s just when confidence is low at football unfortunately results don’t go for you.”

As to the manager himself, every indication from Hearts senior management has been that they are committed to Cathro and Cowie duly urged his team-mates to show similar faith in their manager’s methods.

“What you probably see is what we see,” he said. “He’s fully focused, he’s not going to back down from the challenges ahead. He knew when he got the job there was a lot of scrutiny because of his age and his lack of playing and stuff like that and he’s taken it full on and sometimes you’ve just got to look beyond him and look at us and that’s what it is. It’s the players who haven’t performed well enough on a regular basis.”