Title-chasing Hearts urged to sign when they're winning

BY THE look of him, fitness wouldn't be a problem and, as he watched a disappointing Dunfermline being clinically dismantled, Stephane Adam must have wondered how many goals he'd score as a member of the current Hearts side.

The Frenchman got his fair share in his spell in maroon but, almost eight years on, there clearly remains a feeling the Scottish Cup winners' medal he has to prove it might well have been part of a set.

Which is why Adam would love to see former team-mate Neil McCann, and anyone else Graham Rix fancies signing, arrive at Tynecastle.

"When we won the cup in 1998, we also did well in the league but we lost that when we didn't win a game in April and maybe we just didn't have a big enough squad back then," he explained.

"I was very impressed by Hearts. They look confident and strong, but it is always good to strengthen the squad and Neil would be a great acquisition.

"When there is competition for places, players know they have to do well every week and every club needs that," added the 36-year-old who hopes to use his present role as a youth coach with the French FA as a stepping stone to management. Maybe even in Scotland.

"I love the country and I never played so long for any one team as I did with Hearts, so I think I'll be back some day."

Adam's view that it's a case of the more the merrier when it comes to signings was seconded, up to a point, by Steven Pressley, who put his team on the road to what was eventually a very easy victory when he knocked home the opener from close range. That was the captain's third in as many games and his sixth for the season, a strike rate that prompted Rix to joke that Pressley was the penalty-box predator some think his team still lacks.

"The most important thing is to get the balance right between the Scottish players and the foreign lads. At the moment, I think we have," argued Pressley, who will have to wait a while to add to his goals tally as he now faces a two-match suspension.

"It shows the intent of the football club, however, that we've had a great 20 or 21-game run yet we're still not happy with that. It was imperative we won today and we'll keep plugging away, so don't rule us out."

McCann's arrival isn't quite cut and dried but Rix seemed pretty confident it would be soon although, as Hearts' head coach admitted, he might struggle to get a game on this sort of form.

After an iffy sort of start, the visitors took control of the game and looked on easy street when a neat move between Saulius Mikoliunas and Robbie Neilson saw the full-back's precise cut-back expertly dispatched by Michal Pospisil.

Dunfermline were given a brief glimmer of hope when Mark Burchill cut Hearts' lead in half, but Pospisil doubled it again when he looped a header over the stranded Alan McGregor following a Paul Hartley free-kick, the accuracy of which must have impressed Wolves manager Glenn Hoddle as he sat in the East End Park stand.

Some superb play from Adam's countryman Julien Brellier, bursting into the box and, instead of shooting, rolling the ball into the path of Rudi Skacel, stretched Hearts lead. And they could have been even further out of sight, notably, with an audacious Skacel shot that came back off the woodwork.

That was just one of the many examples of the Czech's undoubted skill on view, but there's a thin dividing line between being a showman and a show-off and there were times on Saturday he walked that line very gingerly indeed.

It's difficult to see where a Dunfermline side badly depleted by injury go from here, and even Jim Leishman's legendary joie de vivre must be slowly ebbing away, although the hoped-for arrival of a left-sided midfielder from France this week might help rekindle it.

While admitting his side were well beaten in the end, Leishman couldn't help wondering what might have happened had an "equaliser" from Greg Ross just minutes after Burchill had scored not been ruled out for offside.

"I couldn't really see anything wrong with it and I don't know why it was chalked off, do you?" asked Leishman of the assembled hacks at the after-match press conference.

As no-one could give him a definitive answer, perhaps big Leish should ask the authorities to have the whole thing replayed!

Taken from the Scotsman