At the end of what proved to be a humiliating afternoon for Hearts, there was no hiding place for Wouter Vrancken and his players.

A complete and utter abomination of a performance from start to finish, there were no positives to be taken from being thrashed 7-1 against Celtic. Plainly, it was seven going on nine or ten.

Nor was there any real mitigation that could be offered in the wake of the club’s heaviest ever defeat to Celtic in a competitive fixture.

It was a sobering experience which surely dynamited any notion of Vrancken’s side challenging for the league title once again this season.

Teams of genuine substance do not capitulate in such fashion. Having won a lot of plaudits for their attacking style of play in recent weeks, it was a huge reality check.

In the aftermath, Vrancken spoke of his players making too many individual errors. That was undeniably true.

Hearts conceded twice from set-plays inside the opening ten minutes and were guilty of some brainless football at times in terms of how cheaply they lost possession.

But the manager should also come under scrutiny for showing such tactical naivety, a refusal to adapt and an inability to stop the bleeding.

There may be some who view it as premature to rule Hearts out of the title race at this relatively early juncture of the campaign. They are only eight points behind Celtic with still almost 30 games to play. Some might view it as harsh to be so critical on Vrancken so soon into his tenure.

But if Hearts are to be taken seriously as title contenders, they will be judged to a higher standard than before. That’s just how it works.

For Stephen Kingsley, who captained the side against Celtic, he certainly didn’t attempt to dress it up afterwards.

He admitted the performance and result was an embarrassment, and that Hearts were simply too naïve in how they went about things.

But with a UEFA Conference League clash to come against Mo Salah’s Trabzonspor in Turkey on Thursday night, Kingsley insists there is simply no time to dwell on it or feel sorry for themselves.

‘It was very raw after the Celtic game on Sunday,’ said Kingsley. ‘I think it was just embarrassment with how we lost the goals in the first half.

‘We shot ourselves in the foot in terms of how we defended. Basically every single goal Celtic scored came from a mistake from us. It was a calamity of errors.

‘It’s hard to sum up the emotions after a game like that. I think it was naive, eh? I think after the second one goes in, there’s a point where you need to build yourself back into the game. But I just don’t think we did that. I don’t think we gave ourselves a chance to because of the mistakes that we made that were punished.

‘Fair play to Celtic, they were clinical. But very, very frustrating from our point of view. You can’t defend like that and expect to get a result.

‘We’ve got major plaudits from a lot of people for how we’ve played recently. But when you take those plaudits, you need to take the criticism when it comes as well.

‘It’s one of those results that, if you linger on it, then you can let it fester and seep into future performances. But we can’t have that. It’s up to myself as one of the more experienced players, and the other boys in the changing room that are a bit older.

‘There’s no one going to be pointing any fingers at one specific person or one specific mistake. I think we all need to take accountability for our own performances, our own mistakes. Have a look at ourselves and what we can do better and learn from it.

‘We’ve got another really difficult game in Europe this week. We need to bounce back quickly and give the fans a performance to be proud of, because Sunday was far from that.’

Kingsley was in the Hearts team that lost the league title at Celtic Park back on the final day of last season. Whilst conceding that Sunday’s performance and result was nowhere near good enough, he insisted that nothing will ever top the pain of what happened last season.

‘No, nothing will ever be worse than that,’ he added. ‘I just feel that it’s very difficult to analyse in terms of what happened on Sunday.

‘I think the number of mistakes that we made leading to goals is the biggest frustration now. But, yeah, as I’ve said, we’ve got another massive game on Thursday. We will dust ourselves down and hopefully this is just a blip in an otherwise successful season.’