Pressley content to continue taking the pressure kicks

PAUL KIDDIE

PENALTY sinner Steven Pressley insisted today he will be happy to be put on the spot again when Hearts take on Feyenoord in the UEFA Cup.

After 12 consecutive conversions for the Jambos spanning two-and-a-half years, Saturday proved unlucky 13 for the skipper, who missed his first competitive penalty for the club in the 3-0 defeat by Celtic at Parkhead.

With Hearts trailing 2-0, his second-half error saw any hopes the Gorgie outfit may have had of salvaging something from the game vanish, John Hartson going on to complete the scoring for the home side 12 minutes later.

The 31-year-old, though, remains totally confident in his ability and has vowed to continue shouldering such responsibility should the opportunity present itself in the Euro showdown with Ruud Gullit’s Dutch giants in Rotterdam on Thursday as the curtain goes up on Group A.

"Of course I will be taking the next one," he said. "That is the first competitive penalty I have missed for Hearts and that isn’t too bad a record.

"I was really disappointed afterwards as it was an opportunity to get back into the game at Celtic Park and I had expected myself to score, but it struck the outside of the post and that was that.

"But it certainly won’t put me off going forward to take the next one we get, that’s for sure."

The performance in Glasgow was not what boss Craig Levein or his men had been looking for ahead of the crunch clash in the De Kuip Stadium.

But while disappointed they didn’t provide Celtic with a stiffer test at the weekend, Scotland star Pressley insists the players will not have a problem lifting themselves for the meeting with Gullit’s league leaders.

"We will have absolutely no problems lifting ourselves for Thursday," he said. "It is never easy to get a result at Parkhead, although we genuinely believed we could.

"It is behind us now and Thursday is the only thing on our minds. We played all last season to get into the UEFA Cup and took care of a very difficult tie in Braga in the last round. We have given ourselves the stage to play some very good games and it’s our intention not just to give a good account of ourselves but to try to qualify."

Hearts have been drawn in what is generally regarded as one of the toughest groups in this inaugural phase of the competition, Schalke, Basel and Ferencvaros the other opponents.

A trip to Switzerland next month is the Jambos’ other away fixture with Schalke and Ferencvaros visiting Murrayfield.

Under the new money-spinning format, three teams progress from the group section to the knockout stages of the tournament, a fact which Pressley insists gives Hearts plenty to play for.

And having already emerged unbeaten from testing matches in Bosnia, Bordeaux and Braga in recent years, the captain reckons there is good reason to approach the forthcoming matches with confidence.

He said: "This is a new set-up for the UEFA Cup with three out of five of the teams going through to the next stage.

"Obviously our home form is vital but as far as the games in Holland and Switzerland are concerned, we just have to look back on how well we did against Zeljeznicar, Bordeaux and Braga in the away legs of those ties.

"We possibly have the tag of being the weakest of the five teams which are in the group. But having said that a lot of people fancied Braga to go through when we played them in Portugal and look what happened.

"We have got tremendous strength and character in our dressing-room and we are determined to do whatever we can to qualify."

Pressley declared himself fit to face Celtic on Saturday despite having been laid low by a virus for the previous week - he missed the World Cup qualifiers against Norway and Moldova - and he is confident he will reap the benefit of his Parkhead outing in Rotterdam.

"I was knackered after the Celtic match but playing the 90 minutes will have done me the world of good," he said.

"I had basically been in bed for the previous week and a half so after Saturday’s game and another couple of training sessions this week, I should be feeling a lot better."

Taken from the Scotsman