Champions elect pass toughest test

STEPHEN HALLIDAY AT TYNECASTLE

Hearts 0
Celtic 1
Petrov (27)

Referee: K Clark
Attendance: 13,753

CELTIC duly restored their 11-point advantage over Rangers at the Premierleague summit yesterday, and the champions-elect are unlikely to have to come through a more testing assignment than this on their path to the title this season.

Stilian Petrov’s first-half goal proved enough to tame a Hearts side which performed with a ferocious intensity and who will consider themselves more than a little unfortunate to have emerged with nothing tangible for their efforts.

It is not often Celtic’s defence are forced to make more significant contributions than those in more advanced areas of the team, but there was little doubt over who were the main men for Martin O’Neill yesterday.

Bobo Balde and Stanislav Varga formed a colossal and ultimately impenetrable barrier to Hearts, receiving admirable support from the utterly dependable Jackie McNamara as Celtic recorded a fifth successive clean sheet.

It was impossible to drag your eyes from a memorable encounter, peppered by controversial moments, littered by no fewer than ten flourishes of referee Kenny Clark’s yellow card and lit up by several cameos of terrific football from both sides.

With such a combustible atmosphere around Tynecastle before kick-off, the game delivered a suitably explosive start.

Chris Robinson had barely taken his seat in the directors’ box - the Hearts chief executive having delayed his arrival until the last possible second as vilification was heaped upon him from three sides of the ground he wishes to vacate - when a fired-up home team almost scrambled a rapid opener as Robert Douglas kept out Phil Stamp’s close-range effort more by luck than judgment.

John Hartson then replaced Robinson as the object of the Hearts support’s fury when Andy Webster was left slumped in a heap after the pair clashed off the ball.

The incident, which took place some 50 yards away from the referee, was spotted by his assistant Brian McGarry who raised his flag against a backdrop of home fans screaming for the big Celtic striker’s dismissal.

Clark decided a yellow card would suffice, but any attempt to calm the frenzied nature of the contest was futile. Before even five minutes had elapsed, there was another flashpoint when Douglas was struck on the side of the head by a coin thrown from the enclosure in front of the main stand. The Celtic keeper made light of the incident which neither police or stewards appeared to spot.

Amongst all of this, a compelling match was developing with Hearts maintaining their initial momentum, although restricted in their examination of Douglas to a couple of well-struck shots from distance by Scott Severin which the rejuvenated Scotland No.1 dealt with confidently.

The Premierleague leaders had paid Hearts a compliment by matching up to them tactically with the deployment of a 4-4-2 formation, Didier Agathe filling the right-back role, but gradually drew the sting out of Craig Levein’s side and began to pose their own inevitable threats.

Stephen Pearson, making his first starting appearance for Celtic in a wide left role with Alan Thompson failing to recover from his calf injury in time, linked up well with Chris Sutton to set up the first real opportunity for the visitors, one Hartson ought to have taken even if Craig Gordon did make a decent save from his close-range shot.

Celtic were beginning to pick their way through the Hearts defence, who benefited from a dreadful decision in the 26th minute when Henrik Larsson, clearly onside as he raced onto Hartson’s cute through-pass, was halted by a late and erroneous flag.

O’Neill’s men had less than a minute to mull over the injustice as they broke the deadlock with their next attack.

Larsson took full advantage of a kindly break of the ball some 30 yards out, feeding a pass into the path of Petrov, whose run through the inside-right channel had not been tracked by Patrick Kisnorbo.

The Bulgarian midfielder struck his low angled shot with conviction and saw the ball squeeze through Gordon’s legs into the net.

Larsson, whose normal deadliness has deserted him somewhat in recent weeks, should have quickly doubled Celtic’s lead when he found himself one on one with Gordon, but directed his shot too close to the young keeper, who was able to make a fairly comfortable block.

It was not only Celtic who were refusing gifts, however. Paul Hartley found himself afforded a free header five minutes from time as he met a Kisnorbo cross, but succeeded only in screwing the ball several yards wide of Douglas’s right hand post.

If anything, the pace of the contest intensified after the interval as Hearts strained every sinew in pursuit of an equaliser, and Celtic responded with the kind of resilience which has become their hallmark, trading blow for blow as the action swirled breathlessly from end to end.

Mark de Vries, who had been well shackled by the imperious Celtic defence, suddenly found himself with a first clear sight of goal of the afternoon when the tireless Stamp played him in - but the big Dutch striker drilled his low shot narrowly wide of Douglas’s right-hand post.

Almost immediately, Celtic countered with a sweeping move which dissected the Hearts back line and presented Petrov with a premium opportunity to claim a second goal. His composure abandoned him, however, and he blazed his close-range shot wildly over the top.

Without the comfort of a second goal, Celtic were forced to endure a torrid passage to the final whistle, relieved only by the frequent interruptions of the referee’s whistle as he administered yellow cards as if they were going out of fashion.

Hearts: Gordon, Maybury, Pressley, Webster, Kisnorbo; Stamp, Hartley (McKenna 86), Severin, Sloan (Weir 82); Wyness, de Vries. Subs not used: Moilanen, Macfarlane, Neilson.

Celtic: Douglas, Agathe, Balde, Varga, McNamara; Petrov, Lennon, Sutton, Pearson; Hartson (Beattie 81), Larsson. Subs not used: Hedman, Lambert, Maloney, Crainey.

Taken from the Scotsman