Hearts' travels end on a high

ALAN PATTULLO AT PITTODRIE

Aberdeen 0
Hearts 1 Tosh (12 og)

Referee: C Thomson. Attendance: 9,687

WHILE a successful mission to Aberdeen these days hardly merits being buried beneath a torrent of praise, the fact it followed a mammoth performance in Bordeaux does supply Hearts’ latest achievement with an extra charge. Providing this result with further context was the emotional nature of this day for the Edinburgh club, whose already weary players attended a memorial service in the morning and then endured a torrid match which saw their troubled opponents gather two red cards but, once again, no points and no goals.

Andy Kirk’s timely deflection of Kevin McKenna’s header had all the aesthetic quality of Mark de Vries’ scrambled goal against Bordeaux in midweek, but was as eagerly accepted in a fixture manager Craig Levein was careful to regard as tricky.

It was made less so by Aberdeen’s general malaise in attack, and the significant fact that they were reduced to nine men for the final 12 minutes of a scrappy match. The first red card was shown to striker David Zdrilic after an off-the-ball incident with Alan Maybury and the second, ten minutes later, to Steve Tosh, whose unhappy day had begun to fray in the moment he applied the final touch to Kirk’s winner while standing on the goal line.

Amid the turbulence created by Tosh’s late tackle on Hearts substitute Austin McCann, the Aberdeen assistant manager, Duncan Shearer, was seen to infringe not only the boundary of his technical area but also that of the pitch. Indeed, by the time he was persuaded to return to his dug-out by referee Craig Thomson, he had almost made it as far as the centre circle in this futile act of protest.

Aberdeen thereafter mounted the kind of frantic siege of the away goal which has to be taken as read when you have nothing else to offer but ragged passion, and when seeking also to avert a fourth straight home defeat. It is a run which piles yet more pressure on manager Steve Paterson, a man who must greet each new morning with all the enthusiasm of Prince Charles at present. His chairman, Stewart Milne, will join him in dreading the break of Tuesday in particular: tomorrow is the day for when the club agm is scheduled.

For all Paterson and even Levein sought to dress up the red cards as evidence of passion having returned to this corner of the north east, in the final analysis there was not much to soothe the Aberdonian soul.

"This was as physically and as mentally tough as I have seen them in a long time," said Levein of the home team, who still appeared very limited. "I can accept defeat if we get everything out of the players," said Paterson. "We lacked a bit of quality but in terms of fighting spirit this was very positive."

Levein has emphasised that it was not the rushed nature of the journey north which had concerned him and the club, but the idea of playing football just a matter of hours after hosting so solemn an occasion as a Remembrance Day service. Most will have sided with him on that, particularly when turning up at Pittodrie on a late Sunday afternoon to find the first stirrings of winter having settled upon the stadium.

It made the famous old place a yet more dispiriting venue to visit, shrouded as it already is in an air of despondency which has clung like a cloak to the club for too long to be disturbed by a grim series of three consecutive league defeats against moderate opposition. Paterson cannot afford to accept the culture of underachievement, however, and warned after last weekend’s defeat by Motherwell that he’d been "too trusting" of certain players.

There was, then, an added interest in the teamlines when delivered prior to kick-off, intrigue surrounding the identity of those the manager considered responsible for another troubled start to the season. As it was, only two first-team regulars suffered the indignity of this very public rebuke. Paul Sheerin was relegated to the bench while Philip McGuire was dropped from the squad altogether, with Scotland Under-19 player Alexander Diamond stepping up to make his first ever Premierleague start.

It was not the swingeing changes one had anticipated, but then there is little more Paterson can do when confronted with the conundrum of a threadbare squad under-performing in a financially stricken league. As he wrote in his programme notes ahead of yesterday’s game: "I don’t have a magic wand I can wave and there is no quick fix".

He might, though, have expected rather more promising evidence that his team were up for the challenges which inevitably lie ahead than the concession of a scrappy goal in only 12 minutes. It was the eighth without reply these long-suffering fans have endured in four home league game against Livingston, Dundee United Motherwell and now Hearts.

A Paul Hartley corner was met on the edge of the box by Kevin McKenna then touched towards the goal by the shoulder of the recalled Andy Kirk. If the presence of Tosh on the goal line encouraged any rise of relief among the home fans, this was swiftly extinguished when their player simply nodded the ball up into the roof of the net.

Paterson had asked for commitment and fight, and until the second half, when any aggression on offer was mostly channelled in nefarious ways, the players seemed not to heed this call. On the one occasion when quality and effort combined to produce a joyous burst of play down the right flank, Scott Booth’s inviting cross was headed on to the junction of bar and post by Zdrilic.

Aberdeen could have come no closer to a goal but still it eluded them, and the second half grew simply to become a lurid catalogue of bookings and, in two instances, red cards. Both Zdrilic and Tosh had already been booked when first the Australian became entangled in a spat with Maybury, and then Tosh lunged in late on McCann.

Aberdeen: Preece, Rutkiewicz, Anderson, Diamond, McNaughton (Morrison 24), Tosh, Deloumeaux (Sheerin 83), Heikkinen, Muirhead, Zdrilic, Booth (Mackie 82). Subs not used: K Robertson, Hinds.

Hearts: Gordon, Pressley, McKenna (Valois 87), Webster, Maybury, Severin, Wyness (Stamp 72), Hartley (MacFarlane 77), McCann, de Vries, Kirk. Subs not used: Moilanen, Weir.

Taken from the Scotsman