Pressley plea: Let's keep politics out of football

HEARTS captain Steven Pressley is hoping boardroom politics can be put to one side until the Tynecastle club make mathematically sure of a place in the Champions League qualifiers.

Pressley watched Saturday's derby defeat from the stands because of a back injury and was joined by Andy Webster and Edgaras Jankauskas who were both controversially dropped by coach Valdas Ivanauskas for the trip to Easter Road despite a number of injuries.

Pressley said: "One of the most important aspects from my point of view is that we have to ensure that football politics don't get in the road of the success of the team. That is vitally important for the rest of the season.

"To be fair to Saulius Mikoliunas and Deividas Cesnauskis, they have performed well in recent weeks and I think they merited their start.

"We didn't play particularly well in the first half and we scored our equaliser against the run of play. It was a similar scenario in the second half when we had a lot of the play but then Hibs scored."

The Tynecastle defender had a perfect view of Hibs' first-half opener and concurred with goalkeeper Craig Gordon's view that it should have been chalked off for offside.

The duo believed that Steven Fletcher had been in an offside position and interfering with the keeper's line of vision when Derek Riordan struck to give the Easter Road side the lead.

However referee Charlie Richmond waved away vociferous protests from the Hearts players - including Gordon who was so incensed that he had raced 30 yards to argue his case.

Pressley added: "I thought that Craig was definitely distracted.

"I don't believe he was going to save the ball and it was great technical ability from Derek Riordan but Craig was slightly impeded by their player in front of him with regards to the shot."

Despite the defeat Pressley praised Hibs keeper Zibi Malkowski for the way he recovered after spilling the ball to allow Roman Bednar to level, adding: "The Hibs goalie will be disappointed but I think the one positive aspect will be the way he came back from it. He showed brilliant composure, his handling was very good, especially on the back of the semi-final when he was rather harshly criticised. I think he showed a lot of character to come back from that."

Taken from the Scotsman