Hearts are hit by striking absence

GLENN GIBBONS AT CELTIC PARK

Celtic 3
Camara (41), Juninho (57), Hartson (82)

Hearts 0

Referee: K Clark. Attendance: 58,869

AS HE left Celtic Park early to travel to Edinburgh to catch a flight to Holland, Craig Levein, the Hearts coach, might well have turned to his assistant and, with every justification, uttered an immortal line: "Houston, we have a problem."

Peter, the man at whom the comment would have been directed, is sensible enough to realise that the Tynecastle club’s difficulty hardly compared with the troubles of Jim Lovell, the originator of the famous alert from the controls of the imperilled Apollo 13 space mission, and spoken to the Texas city housing NASA’s tracking station.

And, unlike the astronaut, both Houston and his commanding officer would have been uncomfortably aware of Hearts’ weakness - and the consequent likelihood of their sustaining further damage - long before the commencement of the assignment in Glasgow.

The merest glance at Levein’s line-up would reveal the damning flaw, the absence once again of the two strikers he is desperate to pair, an ambition whose fulfilment has been denied him by injury since the season began. Mark de Vries and Ramon Pereira, Houston confirmed later, have a chance of being ready for the trip to Rotterdam to meet Feyenoord in the UEFA Cup on Thursday, an encouraging bulletin for the immediate future.

But their unavailability for this visit to the citadel of the reigning champions hinted strongly that Hearts would not, on this occasion, alter a statistic that is scarcely believable. It is that Steven Pressley, their captain and central defender, is presently their highest scorer in the league, with two goals from nine matches.

That the entire team should have mustered only five in total in the Premierleague - Celtic in the same period boast 24 - is mute, but conclusive testimony to the adversity Levein has had to contend with in the matter of fielding his preferred attack.

The manager’s concern would have been deepened by the fact that, by the time he left, Hearts were two goals behind and in a seemingly irrecoverable predicament. But he would be only five minutes out the door when the notorious unfairness of football once again selected his team for its next victim.

Having steadied themselves and begun to make an impression on the home defence - Kevin McKenna having replaced the less-than-fully-fit Graham Weir at half-time and Dennis Wyness having come off the bench in place of Michael Stewart to double their attacking strength - Hearts were awarded a penalty-kick when the stand-side linesman supported Wyness’s claim that Jackie McNamara had handled.

Pressley, whose two goals this season had come from this source and who, as Houston revealed afterwards, had scored "something like 14 out of 14", on this occasion tugged his shot left and clipped the outside of the post. It was final confirmation that this would be a wretched day for the visitors.

Houston, though, was not inclined to excuse his players on the grounds of hard luck or shortage of strikers, perhaps a significant indicator of the ethos that has been introduced at Tynecastle by Levein and his coaching staff.

"Of course, the penalty could have been a turning point and the number of strikers we’ve been missing has not helped," said Houston. "But there’s no doubt we were disappointing in the first half. We weren’t in the game enough.

"And, although we could say that Gordon Marshall made a good save from Kevin McKenna after the big man came on, we would also have to say that Craig Gordon had a few good saves for us. Mark de Vries has a poisoned toe, but he’s making progress and we think he’ll be okay for the match against Feyenoord, returning to his home country.

"Celtic are a good team, but we will have to do better, because I expect Feyenoord to be just as good. We’ll have to keep the ball better, which we did well in Braga in the last round of the UEFA Cup. It’s nice to have big European ties, but we have to look after our league form. It’s not a worry just yet, but we can’t take our eye off it."

Hearts seemed destined to drop from fifth place to sixth in the Premierleague from the moment, close to the interval, when Henri Camara scored the first of Celtic’s goals. John Hartson’s chested knock-down of a long ball from Chris Sutton allowed the Senegalese striker an easy right-foot volley high past Gordon from only six yards.

Hartson would be the linchpin of a 1-2 with Juninho that gave the little Brazilian his first goal for the club, and he would complete his work in the most rewarding manner of all, a clean header past Gordon from an accurate chip from young Ross Wallace.

It should be emphasised that Celtic had personnel problems of their own, with almost an entire defensive unit - Bobo Balde, Joos Valgaeren and Ulrik Laursen - unavailable, as well as the influential Alan Thompson from the left of midfield. But Hearts, like every other club in the league, do not possess anyone of the versatility of Sutton, the big Englishman as effective in the middle of defence as he is in any area of the field he is deployed to police.

Martin O’Neill’s anxiety at the finish centred on the fitness of his missing defenders for the visit to Ukraine to face Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League on Wednesday. "We’re still not sure about Balde and Valgaeren," said the Irishman. "It will be a day-to-day thing with them. I don’t really like to see Chris play centre-half - I would prefer his talents further forward - but we simply had no other choice."

Taken from the Scotsman