Hearts have fortitude to last the pace

GLENN GIBBONS
AT CELTIC PARK

CELTIC 1
HEARTS 1

IN the event of landing the championship, George Burley's acceptance speech at the trophy presentation ceremony is likely to include the claim that his Hearts squad is not big enough or strong enough to win it.

The little Tynecastle manager can hawk the vulnerable and inadequately equipped line from here to eternity, but, after ten matches unbeaten, nobody is buying. Well, except perhaps for an incurably gullible few.

To the more discerning majority, evidence of Hearts' legitimate pretensions to the title is overwhelming. This conviction is not rooted solely in the statistics of their run, or in the fact that they have beaten Rangers at home and left Celtic Park with a draw. Much more persuasive is the manner in which they have achieved the figures.

Burley still found it impossible to resist striking a note of caution in the wake of this latest outing - "there's a long way to go and anything can happen" - but even he was clearly overtaken by an excited optimism after another bold performance. Amid his wide-ranging appraisal of his players' capabilities, there was one sentence that gives the most powerful hint of all to Hearts' credibility as genuine challengers to the Old Firm. It was that "they play without fear".

If there is a single resource that distinguishes them from most other would-be insurrectionists against the Old Firm's oppression of the past 20 years, it is a refusal to be unnerved. This has been central to their work since the start of the season and was most thrillingly demonstrated in their comeback from a two-goal deficit to draw at Falkirk while playing with ten men two weeks ago.

Against Celtic, as Burley pointed out, it was noticeable in his players' reaction to Craig Beattie's giving the home side the lead. It should be emphasised that the young striker's goal was a particularly severe set-back, since Hearts, through the 13 minutes that preceded it, had been unarguably the more impressive and dangerous team. It was the kind of blow that, traditionally, has taken the resistance out of the victim and inflated the confidence of whichever of the Old Firm duo has enjoyed the break, especially on their own ground.

"Celtic scored against the run of play," said Burley, "but our players' heads didn't drop. They kept going and they deserved their equaliser. In the second half, the match could have gone either way. But we've had that kind of resilience from the start. Nobody would have thought we would be unbeaten after ten matches and sitting at the top of the league. It's a tremendous achievement to go ten unbeaten in any league."

Meekness is alien to the present Hearts side and it is not difficult to explain. The ever-hardening self-belief of their Scotland internationalists - in this case, Steven Pressley, Andy Webster and Paul Hartley, in the absence of the suspended Craig Gordon - is complemented by the influx of similarly-equipped foreign players. Takis Fyssas, Julien Brellier, Rudi Skacel, Edgar Jankauskas, Samuel Camazzola and Michal Pospisil clearly have no idea of the protocol which has long dictated that, in the presence of Celtic or Rangers, you are supposed to bow to their majesty. For them, ignorance is truly bliss.

All of these factors were quite properly recognised by Gordon Strachan, the Celtic manager almost contemptuously dismissing the suggestion that Hearts are a temporary phenomenon, that they are unlikely to stay the distance.

"Anybody in football, anybody who knows football, takes them seriously," said the Celtic manager. "That game today was even more intense than I thought and the time seemed to fly by. There was physical contact, with people trying to play good football, and good players stopping them.

"Both seemed to plan well against each other. If ours didn't work as well as we had hoped or expected, it was because, when we were on top, Hearts defended very well and, in general, played very well. They should take a lot of credit."

Curiously, for a match in which both sides contrived good openings, the goals were rather messy. Celtic's came from a cleverly-conceived corner kick, when Alan Thompson on the right rolled the ball to Shunsuke Nakamura on the corner of the penalty area and the Japan midfielder found Neil Lennon beyond the far post with a precise, swinging cross.

The little Irishman headed back across goal, where it was blocked out to Beattie. The striker, composed, made good space for himself, but the left-foot shot was a little untidy and required a deflection from the heel of Brellier to go past goalkeeper Steve Banks.

Skacel's equaliser was simply the result of a mistake by Paul Telfer, who should have made the clearance as he had the ball at his feet, facing his advancing goalkeeper, Artur Boruc. Instead, the full-back allowed it to run, Skacel and Boruc arrived at the same time, the ball broke to the Czech midfielder and his eighth goal of the season was probably the easiest of them all.

It would be a simple matter for disgruntled Celtic supporters to cavil at Strachan's decision to restore Lennon and Thompson to a side that had been very impressive in winning 5-0 at Livingston on their previous outing. But that would take no account of the formidable difference in the strength of the respective opponents.

During a second 45 minutes in which Hearts were forced to spend much more time in their own half than they had before, Chris Sutton and substitute John Hartson both squandered excellent opportunities with hurried, misjudged headers from close range and Banks had a terrific save from a brilliant free kick from another lively Celtic sub, Shaun Maloney.

Matches may be won or lost in specific moments, but the overall balance should determine the justice of the outcome and, in this collision of the top two teams in the Premierleague, only the irretrievably churlish would quarrel with the appropriateness of the scoreline.

Taken from the Scotsman