Hearts 3 Anic OG (53) Tall (79) Bednar (84)
Siroki Brijeg 0

HEARTS go into the return leg of this Champions League qualifying tie with a healthy advantage, thanks in large part to a second-half contribution from a man who was their weak link during the first 45 minutes. Ibrahim Tall, who owed his place in the side to a recurrence of an injury to Julien Brellier, helped to apply pressure for his side's first goal - put into his own net by Branimir Anic - then scored the second himself. A late strike from Roman Bednar ensured a contented conclusion to a night which had begun very edgily.

Victory in this second-round tie is by no means a foregone conclusion, but Hearts will surely benefit from another week's training. Their fitness bore up well right to the end of the five minutes of additional time, but they clearly lacked the verve and cohesion which they showed at their best last season. That was despite having known for some time what almost their entire line-up was going to be.

Hearts in fact made just one change to their planned line-up, replacing Brellier with Tall in the holding midfield role. Brellier had been expected to start after apparently recovering from a thigh strain picked up in last week's friendly against Osasuna, but instead he had to make do with a place on the bench.

Otherwise, the team was as expected, with Christophe Berra partnering Steven Pressley in the heart of defence and Neil McCann playing in his accustomed advanced position down the left. Jamie Mole, who, like Berra, signed a new five-year contract with the club on Tuesday, was among the substitutes.

Despite their having made no new signings during the close season, there was still an unfamiliar look to the Hearts line-up compared to the bulk of last season. Andy Webster and Rudi Skacel, although still officially employed by the club, are thought to be close to finding new employers and were never considered for this match, while Paul Hartley and Jose Goncalves were unavailable through injury.

Those absences meant head coach Valdas Ivanauskas was forced to field an unusually inexperienced Hearts team for the club's first venture into the qualifying stages of the Champions League, and it was therefore important that the senior members of the side ensured a smooth start to the tie. It was McCann who did exactly that with only a minute played, sweeping in a cross which Aguiar glanced over.

That chance, created so swiftly and easily, woke up the team from Herzegovina, and they soon launched a couple of attacks of their own, making it apparent they would be no pushovers. Nonetheless, as the match developed it became apparent that if Hearts remained patient the chances would come.

With ten minutes gone, however, McCann came close to opening the scoring, diving in to a head a cross from Cesnauskis just wide of Tomislav Basic's right-hand post. Five minutes after that, and a shot on the turn from Roman Bednar was just a foot or so too high. As those opportunities showed, the home side were getting some joy from their tactic of stretching the play, particularly down the right where the mercurial Deividas Cesnauskis was very much in the mood to run at defenders. To take a stronger grip on the game, though, they needed a more imposing presence in midfield.

Aguiar was doing his best to fill the role of playmaker usually taken up by Hartley, but too often he found himself isolated. Whereas the reassuring presence of Brellier just ahead of the back four provides a platform for the creative players, Tall was playing alongside Aguiar, and doing little more than jogging along watching play pass him by.

Their team's inability to take control of the game was increasingly a source of frustration for the home support - and one of inspiration for the vociferous band of no more than 100 who had followed their team from Siroki Brijeg. The visiting supporters almost had something tangible to cheer a few minutes before half-time when Wagner, one of the Brazilians in their team, sent a free-kick a foot or two wide of Craig Gordon's goal. That was the last real chance of the half, and the teams left the pitch to the boos of the home support.

Ivanauskas refrained from making any changes at the break, and had in fact already limited his own options by declining to list Lee Johnson among the substitutes. Signed by Graham Rix at the start of the year, the Englishman is not quite the persona non grata that Webster and Skacel have become, but he has been deemed surplus to requirements. That verdict might be fair when Hartley is fit, but in the absence of the Scotland player Johnson is the obvious stand-in; in that case, Aguiar would be able to play in the Brellier role, and as a result the spine of the side would be more stable.

Having said all that against Tall, it must be conceded that he was then involved in the first significant moment of the second half - and one that might prove to be the turning point of the tie. When Robbie Neilson took a long throw-in from close to the right corner flag at least half a dozen players rose in the six-yard box in an attempt to meet the ball. Tall was closer to any other Hearts player to the ball, but just before he could make contact Anic nipped in front of him to head into his own net.

A similar move two minutes later saw Pressley head past from a McCann free-kick, and suddenly the complexion of the match looked much brighter from a Scots perspective. Ivanauskas then decided the time was right to make changes, putting Saulius Mikoliunas on for the tiring McCann, and replacing the out-of-sorts Edgaras Jankauskas with Michal Pospisil, both straight swaps.

If McCann had run himself out, Cesnauskis still had energy in abundance, as he proved when he almost doubled Hearts' lead in the 67th minute. Beating two defenders out wide, he entered the box, stepped inside a third, and then fired in a curling right-foot shot which beat Basic but also evaded the post. It was the first bravura touch on a nervous evening, but Hearts were quickly reminded they were in no position to relax. Latching on to a clever through ball, Celson outsprinted Pressley to advance on Gordon. His shot came back off the post, and although it would not have counted in any case as the referee ruled he had used a hand to control the ball, the incident was still a valid illustration of Hearts' vulnerability. Aguiar could have made the last quarter of an hour more comfortable for his side had he netted with a free-kick, but instead the ball came back off the bar. It was thus left to that man Tall to give Hearts some breathing space in the tie.

Pospisil did the spade work down the right wing, and found the Frenchman in space some ten yards out. Tall's first attempt was an inelegant swing at the ball, but his second was true enough and the shot from five or six yards beat Basic at his near post.

With five minutes left, Roman Bednar then ran down a short back-pass from Ivica Landeka to make it 3-0 with a first-time shot. It was a margin of victory that had seemed improbable, but one which Hearts could yet be glad of next Wednesday against spirited opponents who will not believe themselves beaten yet.

Taken from the Scotsman