There's a commonly used statistic in NBA basketball called 'plus/minus'. Now, bear with me a second, because I know the typical reaction to the mention of 'Yank' sports from a Scottish football fan is to roll your eyes and immediately lose interest.
Over there it is a key stat to measure a player's value to their team. It's fairly simple. While on the court, how many points do their team score compared with how many they concede?
It is not, however, something that's really transferred over to football. At least not to the SPFL. There's not even something like this on Wyscout or Statsbomb, which makes sense. Basketball is five on five. A single player makes a much bigger impact on a court (which comfortably fits inside a football 18-yard box, did you know?), but in 11 against 11 that's much harder to do. The scoring in each sport is also radically different.
Yet everyone reading this knows how significant an impact individual players can have on their team. If they play positively it will lead to better results, and if the struggle then the opposite is true. After all, especially in the modern game, most sides cannot get away with carrying a passenger. The game is too demanding and opponents have done their homework and know where to exploit.
So it felt appropriate to take that concept and apply it to Heart of Midlothian's 2024/25 season. As things stand, the men in maroon have netted 57 times in all competitions and conceded 59. So let's break it down player by player and see where each rank in an overall 'plus/minus' (actually, let's just call it 'goal difference') table. Let's get the negatives out of the way first:
There's a surprising name propping up the table. Hearts fans rated Boateng fairly and when he did leave in the January window, after a short six-month spell, he went with their best wishes. But it did become clear by the end of his stay that manager Neil Critchley had decided he didn't really fancy him. So his opinion perhaps mirrored the player's individual goal difference: while he may have calmly knocked the ball around the midfield area, he may not have had the positive impact on the scoreline that many would have assumed.
It's no surprise to see the majority of those names in the bottom 10. Other than the three summer signings (Gerald Taylor and Daniel Oyegoke, along with Boateng) they were all players who were instrumental in Hearts taking third place last season but saw their form fall off a cliff in the opening part of this campaign. The collective certainly dragged down their tallies as Hearts started the season with 10 games without a victory, but it's hard to look at those names and say many of them had a positive contribution during that time.
The one outlier is perhaps Cammy Devlin, who has been largely excellent of late and wasn't too bad at the start of the season. Devlin does get the hard assignments as he's often trusted in games where Hearts aren't fancied due to his tireless graft in the midfield, so this has dragged his total down somewhat.
Players with the best plus/minus
Bet you didn't expect to see that name at the top of the pile? Adam Forrester does seem to divide opinion among the Hearts support. He is a young player who makes mistakes as a result of his inexperience and has been relied on more than the club would've liked, but he's also easily been the team's best right-back this season, as the numbers indicate.
His score is aided by featuring only once during the dreadful run to begin the season (the 1-1 draw with Ross County) but you can't deny his ascension into the first team improved the right-side of the defence.
There's a few names you'd expect to see in the top 10 and if we remove Lewis Neilson for his small sample size, James Penrice also takes a place among them (+2).
The January additions of McCart, Steinwender and Kabangu have undeniably improved the club's fortunes, while James Wilson is someone who was both absent for most of the bad early-season run and has elevated the team with his play.
Read more
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The rise of Adam Forrester: From B team captain to Hearts regular and under-21 call
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How Lawrence Shankland splits opinion at Hearts – Heavy burden, attitude and future
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Neil Critchley on defeat to Celtic: Risk/reward and the team he wants Hearts to be
Blair Spittal has fallen off a little recently but it's no shock to see his name given his performance-level earlier in the campaign. And his sixth-place position in this table just further highlights Beni Baningime's value.
The surprising names to feature are the three who were at the club from the outset but have played the least minutes, which does partially explain their inclusion.
Other than a four-minute cameo at the end of the Scottish Cup win over Dundee, Musa Drammeh has only been trusted to play Scottish Premiership matches. Though, it has to be said, his pace does make him a useful and effective weapon in the right circumstances.
Yan Dhanda has struggled for starting opportunities since August and hasn't featured since the 6-0 win at Dundee when he came on as a late sub. It wouldn't be a surprise to see the club tell him he's free to go in the summer but, perhaps, his play was at least slightly better than the opinion of many.
Special thanks to Oliver Gourlay for collating the majority of these numbers
