Misfiring Hearts fail European test

HEARTS are on the brink of going out of the UEFA Cup after losing 2-0 in the first leg of their first-round tie against Sparta Prague last night. Defeated by a slicker, more accomplished outfit, they require an improbable improvement before the return leg in a fortnight if they are to avoid adding elimination from this competition to the exit they made from the Champions League qualifiers last month.

More significantly than this result, however, is the fact that, although they lie third in the SPL, Hearts have not played anywhere near as well as they did last season, either in Europe or domestically. For Valdas Ivanauskas, that is because of the number of injuries they have had, while suspensions have not helped either. After seeing his team booed off the pitch last night, though, the increasingly embattled coach knows that everything will have to click into place very quickly if he is to retain the confidence of the club's owner.

Vladimir Romanov has already offered his public backing to Ivanauskas, saying that he will review the coaching set-up halfway through the season, and he does trust the former Hamburg striker in a way he certainly did not trust those British coaches he employed last season. Nonetheless, if Hearts' present mediocrity becomes a sustained malaise, something will be done. Romanov, after all, is not renowned for his patience.

It should be remembered, too, that he has already sacked Ivanauskas - from Kaunas - while still regarding him as part of his inner circle.

As ever, Ivanauskas would not dwell on his own future after this dispiriting defeat, referring a question about it to a higher authority. "It is not for me, this question," he said. "If you want, you can ask other people. Tomorrow is training."

In other words, he will go on with business as usual until informed otherwise. But business as usual at Hearts these days is rarely the same from one week to the next. Unpredictability has become a constant.

If Romanov is loath to prove some of his critics correct by offering up the coach as a sacrifice, there is still a middle way he can take - namely, by giving Anatoli Korobochka, the director of football, a more hands-on role. Handling a club under crisis is a novel experience for Ivanauskas, who is still a coaching novice after all, and a reasonable argument is to be made for giving him some senior assistance.

For the moment, though, he intends to soldier on for as long as he can. "It's not easy, but we need now to be ready for a tough game [at Motherwell] on Sunday," he said. "The fans can see the players working hard, but I can understand [why they booed], because of last season."

What no-one could understand was why Ivanauskas brought on Ibrahim Tall and Deividas Cesnauskis for Mauricio Pinilla and Mirsad Beslija. The latter had been playing better than most of his team-mates, while Pinilla, who had been the pick of the home side, showed his disgust at being substituted.

Ivanauskas said that Tall was there to shore up the midfield, but he could have done that without taking off the two players he did. The coach also said the pitch - sodden after a day of heavy rain - had hampered Hearts. But it did not stop Sparta from looking very smart, and according to Paul Hartley it was not a significant factor in the home team's underperforming.

"I'm not going to start blaming the pitch," Hartley said. "The surface was fine after the first 15 minutes."

Hartley also declined to look to the list of suspensions and injuries as an excuse. "We just had to get on with it," he added. "We have a big enough squad to cope. We just didn't perform on the night.

"We have enough characters in the dressing-room. We've enough Scottish lads."

Hearts' current travails, and particularly those of Ivanauskas, contrast starkly with Sparta under their new coach. Michal Bilek has restored the team's fortunes in just a couple of games, and rightly looked a satisfied figure last night.

"We played very well, had a lot of chances, and prevented them from playing," Bilek summed up. "Our aim was to play a good possession game.

"It wasn't an easy match at all. The return leg will be difficult too. Of course this result is very good, but the next match will still be a hard match."

Taken from the Scotsman