Dundee 0 - 1 Hearts

JAMES MORGAN, at Dens Park August 09 2004

TRAFFIC jams - now there's a novel sight in the side streets around Dens Park. But then that's what renewed optimism does to football fans. The burden of administration finally lifted from their team, Dundee's regulars turned out in numbers confident they were coming to inspect the early shoots of re-growth. It was an encouraging sight for Peter and Jimmy Marr, and with Dundee's debt still estimated at £8m, it will make a welcome change from a queue of players desperately trying to exit.

Not surprisingly, the legacy left by the administrators, Ernst and Young, is a parsimonious one. The penny-pinching has even penetrated the press box: the complimentary half-time cuppa and meat pie is no longer free. Dundee's financial woes, it seems, are the fault of the nation's football writers, not the fiscal recklessness of the brothers Grim, sorry Marr. Administration brings more tangible downsides: like Nacho Novo's departure and John Sutton's arrival. He may look, run and barge like his big brother, but the gene carrying Mr and Mrs Sutton's football talent clearly expended most of its effort on Chris. John, on the other hand, never really looked like impacting on this game.

It's a reality that Jim Duffy, the Dundee manager, hinted at, but he refused to judge the efforts of his strikers (Sutton and Steve Lovell) on just one game.

"We just didn't cut it up front. I've got two boys who are just learning to play with each other. They are both good players and they will do well, but you also have to give credit to Hearts' defending. [Steven] Pressley and [Craig] Gordon are both international players."

For Craig Levein, the Hearts manager, there were positives and negatives. Having watched his side toil, he ruminated over the "sticky" quality of the Dens Park grass before lauding the performances of Ramón Pereira and Joe Hamill.

"We over-elaborated a little bit, but we always looked like we would score. Ramón worked his socks off and Joe played his best game for us. That's just a taster of what he can do and hopefully he'll take confidence from that."

With both sets of strikers misfiring, it was left to Steven Pressley, the Hearts captain, to score the only goal of the game from the spot, after a foul on Pereira by Derek Soutar, the Dundee goalkeeper, following Hamill's clever through ball.

The new signing went down quicker than a curling expert descending the steps of the SFA offices and Craig Thomson, the referee, immediately gave the decision. Pressley, who had given an imperious display, dispatched the penalty to seal a 85th-minute winner, but it was tough on Soutar who had made fine saves from Pereira, Graham Weir and Hamill.

He was a particularly forlorn figure afterwards. Pereira, in contrast, was in ebullient mood. The mullet-afflicted Spaniard had been a straggly hair's length from giving his side the lead on a number of occasions and, finishing aside, turned in a lively debut.

As he waited to board the Hearts coach he beamed smiles to a pocket of Jambos who had gathered outside Dens Park after the game.

The reason? Well, the traffic jams had cleared, hadn't they.

Taken from the Herald