McPherson finds his latest trip a long haul

IAN PAUL

28 Nov 1994

OPTIMISTIC and good-natured though he is, Dave McPherson must wonder if he has made one journey too many down the M8.

The Hearts defender, who has made an admirable success of his inter-city career so far, has every reason to be a bit uncertain about his latest, and presumably last, move between Ibrox and Tynecastle.

In the five games he has played for Hearts he has yet to be in a winning side but, perhaps more important, the prospects of recovery look bleak.

McPherson stood like some kind of defiant warlord fending off attack after attack from Kilmarnock late in the second half at Rugby Park, as the defence around him collapsed in alarming disarray.

There is only so much one man can do.

And Dave did it.

It is not difficult to see why manager Tommy McLean was so committed to capturing McPherson when Alan McLaren had to go to bring in cash to satisfy the bankers.

With him in the side, they have some hope of staving off the opposition in the premier division.

Without him they would be in even more desperate straits.

It was largely due to him that Killie were restricted to a 3-1 victory in the end, but that is no consolation for McLean or the Hearts fans, who know now, if they were not already fully aware of it, that their club is in serious bother.

There is little money round to buy players of the quality required and the departure of McLaren and Tosh McKinlay (transferred to Celtic), as well as the suspensions of Craig Levein, Graeme Hogg, and Stephen Frail, and the injury to Neil Berry, have left them dreadfully vulnerable.

McLean made the point that rushing out to buy a centre half could turn out to be a waste of money once the injuries and suspensions are over.

But he knows, too, that anyone who can help the club over the fraught weeks in the interval will be worth the investment.

Levein and Hogg are not due back for a couple of months yet and it may not be until the McPherson-Levein double act is together again that there will be true stability in the centre of defence.

Meanwhile, McLean has had to resort to emergency measures, like the recall of reserve coach Walter Kidd against Killie.

The 36-year-old did really well in the first half, but after the break the old legs sagged, and only the brain worked at full pace.

McLean used examples like Davie Cooper, Dave Narey, and Roy Aitken as older men still playing well enough, and maybe Kidd, given time to get match fit at that level again, could do the same.

Certainly, if he did tire a bit there was no excuse for the demise of the midfield in front of him when young Kevin Thomas had to go off suffering from concussion early in the second half.

The energetic and willing Thomas had been Hearts' best attacker till then and it was no coincidence that his team were still a goal up when he was carried off.

We were left to wonder if he transmitted a kind of telepathic mass concussion as he went off to the dressing room.

His mates seemed to go into a dwam.

But it might well be that Killie were only beginning to get their own machine revved up.

They certainly went to work with a will from that point on, and no one inspired them more than Ally Mitchell who had already been their most productive player in the first half.

He headed in the first goal at the far post after good work by Colin McKee.

That nullified the John Robertson score in the first half when Hearts had played some good stuff and were worth their lead.

McKee himself shot home the second and with three minutes left Mark Skilling made sure for his team.

That final goal summed up the state of Hearts' defence by then.

Skilling deserves great credit for the skill he showed in meandering along the 18-yard line, confronted by at least three defenders.

But Hearts fans were as bamboozled as their players apparently were when the Killie man was allowed to dawdle his way inside the box and shoot smartly past Smith.

By now there was no question who deserved to win but, before that, Tom Brown spoiled it a bit by getting himself sent off for a second booking.

Manager Alex Totten was none too pleased about that but highly delighted overall, especially with the composed display given by new Slav keeper Dragoje Lekovic, who looked well worth the £100,000 spent on him.

Taken from the Herald