Inverness CT 0 - 1 Hearts

Alan Campbell at The Caledonian Stadium

NOT at all pretty, but this was precisely the grinding victory the league leaders will require if their championship challenge is to be sustained. George Burley’s side stretched their advantage at the top of the Prem ierleague to eight points, and Rudi Skacel maintained his astonishing goal-a-game record to give him, and his side, a perfect seven from seven.

The circus now moves on to Tynecastle on Saturday for the televised midday game against Rangers. As Steven Pressley, the impressive Hearts captain, said: “If we had lost today it would have put added pressure on us to bounce back. Now I think the pressure is on Rangers.”

Yesterday was the kind of game which all league leaders dread; a visit to a fiercely competitive mid-table side with nothing to lose and all to play for in front of a noisy support. Hearts, despite Pressley’s words, never looked like dropping all three points, but they could easily have lost two if Craig Dargo, coming from an offside position late in the first half, hadn’t poked a probably goal-bound shot from Darren Dods into the net.

A break then, for Hearts, and once the euphoria of another win has died down Burley will have to be concerned at his growing dependence on Skacel’s goals. It’s all very well to claim, as he did on Thursday, that none of his first-choice strikers are fully fit; the season is now well under way and they have chipped in with four goals out of 20 in the league.

Michal Pospisil has barely played a game through injury, but neither Edgar Jankauskas nor Roman Bednar looked particularly impressive, although their physical presence con- tinues to leave defenders with their eyes off the ball. Paul Hartley, too, had a quiet game and was possibly feeling the exertions of his international performances; it was left, as Pressley pointed out, to the defence to put in a disciplined 90 minutes and keep Craig Brewster’s side at bay.

Despite being hard to break down, Caley have yet to win a game at home and they are as reliant on the player-manager scoring goals as Hearts are on Skacel, who now moves ahead of Brewster and Celtic’s John Hartson as the leading scorer in Scotland. His goal on 28 minutes again proved vital to the Tynecastle club; a Takis Fyssas throw-in was flicked on by Bednar and Skacel scored sweetly from about 15 yards.

Hearts, as they have done against opponents in every game this season, had earlier started by repeatedly pinging the ball into the Caley penalty area. Brewster described it before the game as “bang, bang, bang” having seen the tactic being deployed against his old side, Dundee United, in the third game of the season.

This time, though, it didn’t bring an early goal and Hearts had to be content with the bulk of the possession in a stadium which has only three sides built. The wind was whipping down the pitch behind them, as was the drizzle; it all made for a poor spectacle and not one which showed up the visiting side to their best effect.

Skacel, as ever, was keen to test the Inverness goalkeeper, Mark Brown, but the home side grew in confidence after the early onslaught and a feature of their play was the clever linking between Brewster and Barry Wilson.

Skacel’s strike almost on the half hour came when it was least expected, and turned out to be one of the few highlights of a drab game.

The Czech was harshly booked for celebrating his goal and certainly, when the same yellow card was meted out to Inverness midfielder Ian Black for a crude and potentially damaging tackle on Julien Brellier, it seemed laughable that both actions had merited the same penalty.

Caley, though, were desperately unlucky not to equalise just before the interval. Grant Munro hit the post with a header and Dods, following up with a shot, seemed to have put Brewster’s side level before the too-eager, and offside, Dargo made sure by prodding the ball over the line. The former Kilmarnock striker hasn’t scored for his new club, so his reaction was understandable.

“Obviously, I apologised,” he said later. “I wasn’t sure if the ball was going in or not, and I’d still like to see it again .”

The second half was a largely forgettable affair and, for all that Hearts would have looked unimpressive to their Highland audience, Craig Gordon was completely protected by a tight and efficient defence. There was a stir among the visiting supporters when Burley sent on the Brazilian, Samuel Camazzola, for McAllister after 55 minutes, the midfielder apparently not impressing the manager since being taken to Gorgie by Vladimir Romanov.

There was little in the remain ing 35 minutes to show what Camazzola can do. If anything, Caley had the better chances, but as Brewster later pointed out, they didn’t test Gordon.

Taken from the Sunday Herald