NEILSON: NO GUARANTEES UNDER IVANAUSKAS

By Ronnie Esplin, PA Sport

Hearts defender Robbie Neilson admits no-one at Tynecastle can take their place for granted under interim manager Valdas Ivanauskas.

Before the 4-0 rout of Dunfermline at Tynecastle in the Bank of Scotland Premier League, the surprising omission of Scotland international defender Andy Webster and influential French midfielder Julien Brellier from the starting X1 was overshadowed by the news that cult hero Rudi Skacel had not even found a place on the bench.

Neilson claims the Edinburgh club's 35-strong squad means the Lithuanian, who took over from sacked Graham Rix last month, has the luxury of making changes to any position for any game.

He said: "I don't think anybody is secure in the team.

"But I don't think Valdas dropped them, we played Hibs last Sunday then Celtic on the Wednesday and we have five big games coming up.

"It was a surprise Rudi was not even on the bench but it's one of those things.

"He's been fantastic this season but there's five games to come so I'm sure he will be back in the team because he's a very important player for us.

"But with the size of squad we have here, we can comfortably do that for home games and still get the result.

"It's a sign of the times at Hearts that we can bring players in and they do so well, it's a case of us being a squad as opposed to a team.

"And we've still got other players to come back like Jamie McAllister and Neil McCann who are out injured so it augurs well for us."

The Jambos celebrated 120 years at Tynecastle with an easy victory against a hapless Pars outfit who could yet be dragged into a relegation battle with bottom side Livingston despite having an eight-point advantage over the Almondvale men.

First-half goals by Michal Pospisil, Roman Bednar and Saulius Mikoliunas gave the rampant home side a convincing interval lead allowing them to cruise through the second half adding one more goal from substitute Juho Makela with minutes remaining.

Neilson insists a more methodical way of playing under Ivanauskas paid dividends.

He said: "I thought it was one of the best performances we've put in.

"We passed the ball well and Valdas has tried to install that into the team.

"He has been telling us not to panic, to keep hold of the ball and knock it about and chances will come.

"We scored a few goals in the first half but even in the second half, although we only scored one, we had a few chances by keeping the ball and trying to pick them off. So it was a good day for the team."

To add to the Fifers' misery, in the dying moments youngster Greg Ross was shown a straight red card for an overly-robust challenge on man-of-the-match Bruno Aguiar.

However, Dunfermline manager Jim Leishman tried to look for some positives, saying:

"The important thing is the three under-21 players playing in midfield will learn from that.

"You see the experience that Hearts had with Paul Hartley, the best midfielder in Scotland.

"So it was always going to be difficult for them."

Taken from sportinglife.com