Kye Rowles rallies Hearts for crucial Plzen playoff and names key reasons for stuttering start to new season

Kye Rowles admits it’s down to Hearts’ blundering stars to sort out their sorry start to the season – starting against Viktoria Plzen on Thursday night.

The Aussie defender knows Steven Naismith’s players can’t keep shooting themselves in the foot with sloppy defending after shipping another three cheap goals in Sunday’s 3-1 defeat at Motherwell. Rowles revealed the players held their own inquest in the Fir Park dressing room in the immediate aftermath of the latest loss which made it four defeats in a row and no wins from five games this season.

Just under 3000 Hearts fans made the trip to Lanarkshire but the majority had streamed out of the away end long before the final whistle blew on another rotten 90 minutes. And Rowles knows Naismith’s men now owe it to those supporters to overturn the 1-0 first-leg deficit on the Czechs and clinch a Europa League group stage spot at Tynecastle on Thursday night.

Ironically, a slow start to last season also saw league defeats to Dundee and Motherwell in the opening four games before the Jambos clicked into gear and finished third in the top flight by a country mile. And Rowles is hoping for a bit of a repeat.

The 26-year-old said: “It’s obviously not ideal, but we’ve got to stick to it and keep getting around each other. We’ve got the end goal for the season, we’re still aiming to reach that.

“Nothing has changed mentality-wise, we’re not going out there to concede three goals. We don’t go out there to lose games. Sometimes you get stuck in a place where the ball doesn’t go your way and you concede a silly goal at a bad time. It’s cost us so far this season.

“The collective goals that we’ve conceded so far, it’s an error or two here and there. When we’re getting on top, we’re