Kirk is tower of Hearts' strength

STUART BATHGATE AT TYNECASTLE

Hearts 3 Kirk (74, 85), Pressley (pen 90)
Livingston 1 Lilley (51)

Referee: S Dougal. Attendance: 11,233

FOUR points clear in third place, with three wins in eight days. If this, as Craig Levein admits, is Hearts not firing on all cylinders, their supporters can look forward to being richly entertained when they do get their act together.

True, one of those victories was the scrappy CIS Cup effort against Falkirk, and another the almost effortless defeat of bottom-of-the-table Partick Thistle. But the fact remains that Hearts have made a decent start to their quest to retain third place in the league, a quest which, as their coach has often pointed out, has invariably been failed in recent seasons.

Livingston are just one of the teams to have toiled the year after being anointed best of the rest, and their position this term suggests they are nowhere close to reaching such exalted heights again. If they can play consistently as they did on Saturday, however, they will surely be top-six contenders.

Indeed, for much of the game Livingston were the better side, more composed on the ball, more intelligent in its distribution. After Derek Lilley’s opening goal from a counter-attack, they had opportunities to kill the game off, and were still in with a chance of getting what would have been a deserved point right up until Steven Pressley’s injury-time penalty.

By then, Hearts had taken the lead through two Andy Kirk goals. The first, which ended a run of five games in which Roddy McKenzie had not conceded, was a tap-in after a low drive from Mark de Vries came back off the post, while the second was a first-time shot from a throw-in which should not have been allowed to reach him.

As he stepped up to take the penalty, it was not only the fine form of the Livingston goalkeeper which filled Pressley with trepidation.

"I was a wee bit concerned," the captain said, "because I used to take penalties against Roddy in training when he was here, and he saved them on a regular basis. I changed my mind at the last minute about where I wanted to put it, and thankfully it went in."

Pressley’s goal not only wrapped up the points, it was the culmination of a curious afternoon from referee Stuart Dougal, who is to be the subject of an official complaint from Livingston. At times too ready to hand out yellow cards - those he showed to Pressley, Paul Hartley and Stuart Lovell all seemed harsh - Mr Dougal then chose not to issue one at all to Brian Kerr, who, as last man when he was harshly judged to have brought down De Vries, could easily have been sent off.

Instead, it was another player who walked. David McNamee, who had received a caution just five minutes earlier, was shown a straight red for abusive language, and then, as the teams walked off down the tunnel, Lee Makel was told by Dougal that he, too, would be given a yellow card for dissent. Livingston were understandably upset with the referee for the penalty decision, but some of their anger was also self-induced, as the level-headed Lovell said later.

"It’s getting to the stage where officials are blamed for everything, and I will say he definitely didn’t cost us the game," the visiting skipper reasoned.

"We should have had the game wrapped up but for our own inept finishing. But we were disappointed with the handling of the penalty. We thought it was a good tackle by Brian, and you can’t help thinking if it was a penalty, why wasn’t he sent off?"

What made the result worse for Livingston was that even the mishaps had been working in their favour.

An injury to Dorado forced them to abandon their three-man defence and switch to a less-familiar 4-4-2, but the introduction of Juanjo Camacho brought fresh inspiration to their play further up the park. Similarly, the half-time loss of David Fernandez to a hamstring strain did not bode well, but his replacement, John-Paul McGovern, was at least as active a harrier of the Hearts defence.

Nevertheless, Livingston paid dearly for their failure to score a second, as Hearts shrugged off their hesitancy to round the match off in style.

"We’ve come from behind now on numerous occasions," Pressley noted. "The spirit and resilience of the team showed through against a very well-organised Livingston side."

Pressley also touched on one of Levein’s favourite themes, the difficulty of maintaining that place behind the Old Firm.

"A lot of SPL clubs see us as a big scalp now," he said. "It’s definitely going to be hard to finish third this season."

It is just as surely going to be hard to come away from Bordeaux on Thursday night with the sort of result which gives Hearts a sporting chance of winning their UEFA Cup second-round tie, and they will need to be more sure-footed in defence than they were for an hour of this game.

The qualities mentioned by their captain take them a long way, though, and it would be no surprise if they at least came back from France with a goal.

Taken from the Scotsman