Hearts 4 - 0 Dunfermline
Richard Moore at Tynecastle

HEARTS yesterday cast aside Dunfermline with ease but just as crucially added more goals to their tally as the battle for second spot with Rangers hots up. It was as though hope was renewed at Tynecastle that the challenge from the Ibrox outfit can be held off as the home team turned in a sprightly and polished performance.

Dunfermline, though, also offered little resistance, as their advantage over bottom-placed Livingston was cut to eight points. It should prove enough for the Fifers to stay up, but Hearts’ three point lead over Rangers remains precarious. However, with goal difference now even more in Hearts’ favour – by a comfortable margin of 12 – it is effectively a four-point advantage.

Another, less tangible, factor for the Gorgie side is the confidence gained from last weekend’s semi-final drubbing of Hibs. Even the absence of Rudi Skacel, from both the starting line-up and the bench, couldn’t dampen the mood of celebration at Tynecastle, for what was Valdas Ivanauskas’s first home match in charge on the occasion of the stadium’s 120th birthday.

Nevertheless, the team selected by Ivanauskas was a surprise. As well as Skacel, Andy Webster was also missing, though he at least was a substitute. There were unconfirmed rumours that, rather than watch the game from the stands, Skacel had walked out of Tynecastle on learning of his non-selection.

Ivanauskas was cagey on this. “We have a lot of players, and Rudi is one player,” he said of the midfielder. “We need a fresh Rudi – today he was out of the squad, but there is no problem. With Andy Webster it is the same situation; and Julian [Brellier].

“Every game is different. [But] the players are professional, and very experienced; I think when they’re clever they understand [why they’ve been dropped]. We had a very, very hard game in the week. I see no problem.”

Asked whether Skacel had stayed to watch the game, the acting head coach shrugged: “I don’t know Rudi must watch the game.”

Yet quibbles over the players who were missing seemed a little pointless given the emphatic nature not only of Hearts’ win, but also their performance. In the first half they were excellent, with three goals, each one set up by Robbie Neilson, putting the result beyond all doubt within 25 minutes.

“It was one of the best performances we’ve put in all season,” said Neilson. “It was a good day for the club.”

But the full back admitted that he too had been caught out by Skacel’s omission. “It was a wee bit surprising, but he’s been fantastic for us all season,” he added.

Grey skies were replaced by sunshine as the game kicked off, and Hearts started suitably brightly. From the first minute they had a settled look about them; surprising considering the changes made. Instantly Deividas Cesnauskis, operating in Skacel’s usual berth on the left of midfield, cut inside and unleashed a powerful long- range shot which sailed only narrowly wide.

It lifted the crowd, if indeed those still singing about the cup semi-final defeat of Hibs could be lifted any more. A minute later, in an almost identical move to Cesnauskis’s effort, his counterpart on the right of midfield, Saulius Mikoliunas, drifted inside to hit another long-range shot, which looked as if it would curl inside Allan McGregor’s far post until the Dunfermline goalkeeper dived to push it wide for a corner.

It was a good save that set up three corners, and served to raise the expectation levels inside Tynecastle. They could smell blood, and it was only another few minutes before the first wound was inflicted.

Neilson’s long throw-in from the right, as effective as a corner, seemed to drop into a hole in front of the Dunfermline goal and the first to arrive was Michal Pospisil, who had a simple tap-in to open the scoring in seven minutes.

Again it was Neilson who set up the second seven minutes later, this time with a cross that floated into the box and was met by a leaping Roman Bednar. He made rather untidy contact with the ball, but it looped towards the top corner, over the head of McGregor, who was caught between Bednar and his line.

Number three put the seal on the first half in 25 minutes. Yet again Neilson delivered the final pass, though on this occasion he left Mikoliunas with much to do. In fact, it was hardly a scoring chance at all, but the Lithuanian did well to cut inside, once again, and fire a low shot through a crowd of bodies in the box, with the ball nestling cleanly in McGregor’s goal.

Bednar could have made it four after 33 minutes but McGregor got down well on this occasion to save it. Perhaps if the final pass had come from Neilson, he of the Midas touch, it would have found the net.

Hearts started the second half looking as if they were in the mood for more, and few would have bet at this stage against it becoming a rout. Instead, though, there was quarter of an hour of frenzied activity, and the repeated battering of the Dunfermline box, but no goals, and the game died a long, lingering death, which became quite painful to watch.

In the throes of this, a goal did come, eight minutes from the end. A corner taken by the excellent Bruno Aguiar found Juho Makela, who had replaced Pospisil, and his free header found the net.

Aguiar didn’t last much longer. Five minutes later he was scythed down by Greg Ross, who was – perhaps harshly – given a straight red card for the challenge. Aguiar hobbled off, but to a deserved ovation from the delighted home support.

Taken from the Sunday Herald