Ex-Hearts ace Ryan Stevenson delivers brutal assessment of performance in 1-1 draw

Hearts required a late penalty from Liam Boyce to rescue a point against the team who sat second bottom of the Championship coming into the match.

For large periods the league leaders underwhelmed and under-performed.

It was a performance which Stevenson frustrated as he expressed the standards required at Tynecastle.

"Rubbish,” was the former Hearts star’s assessment on BBC. “They need to be doing so much better.

"I watched the Ayr United game, it wasn’t great but they came away with the three points. They've come away with a point tonight. I don’t think they deserved it. I think they need to do much, much better from what they’ve been doing.

"They’ve got so much experience through their team. It wasn’t until Stevie Naismith came on that you heard somebody speaking, somebody telling players where to go.

"I don’t think you can have [complacency] when you play for Hearts. You are playing for a massive team. I find it difficult to take.

"You are coming here, representing a club the size of Hearts. No disrespect to Queen of the South but you are playing Queen of the South.

"Yes, we can all have bad nights. I get that, I understand that. I had plenty of them. but what you can’t get away with is not going into tackles, not trying to dominate your opponent.

"I just think Hearts were so passive at times, that’s the reason why Queen of the South were much better than them."

Surface

After the match, manager Robbie Neilson spoke of the detrimental impact the artificial surface had on the team's performance.

However, Stevenson, who played more than 120 times for the club, was “not having that”.

"Hearts will train on this,” he said. They have got a facility like this they will train on every day. I guarantee you, when you go to training Hearts players will be bopping the ball five days a week in there.

"There’s absolutely no reason why Hearts couldn't be playing a lot, lot better than what they did.”