Craig: We're with Valdas

THE Hearts players have been relieved by the news that head coach Valdas Ivanauskas will not have his position questioned in the wake of last night's UEFA Cup elimination.

Goalkeeper Craig Gordon admits that the squad believe it is only right that the Lithuanian remains in place and that their unstinting support for him continues despite the 2-0 aggregate loss to Sparta Prague.

After a 0-0 draw in the Toyota Arena, the Edinburgh club exited the UEFA Cup on a 2-0 aggregate scoreline, however Gordon was quick to speak out to reinforce the squad's backing for their head coach.

Hearts' majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov promised yesterday that Ivanauskas' job would not come under threat even if the club exited the UEFA Cup.

"It's good to know Valdas is safe in his job because the players are all playing for him," said Gordon. "We want stability at the club. We've gone out of Europe now but that can allow us to concentrate on our domestic form.

"I don't think there should be a question over Valdas' future. We have been on a decent run domestically recently, we've gone four games undefeated now and lost only one goal in that time. I think we've turned the corner in a sense. Last night was a decent performance and we now hope to go on from here.

"We had a chance or two during the last five minutes against Sparta but it wasn't to be. I don't think we could have played much better but the damage was done in the first leg."

"From the players' point of view, we haven't had a midweek off since the season started so it will be good to get the chance to recuperate."

Ivanauskas agreed with Gordon's sentiments on the tie, conceding that the 2-0 victory secured by Sparta in Edinburgh proved too great a barrier for Hearts to overcome in Prague.

"Congratulations to Sparta Prague but I think we lost this game at Murrayfield," he said. "We were under big pressure in the first half last night and Sparta had a lot of chances. We stayed very disciplined and were waiting for our chance but I think if Jamie Mole scores his chance early in the second half then we go into the next round."

Mole missed Hearts' best chance of the night after the ball broke fortunately for him in the Sparta penalty box. The young striker could only drive his effort straight at goalkeeper Jaromir Blazek.

"That would have made it a very interesting game," continued Ivanauskas, who faced questions on his substitutions during the match when he replaced Robbie Neilson with Ibrahim Tall and Mauricio Pinilla with Bruno Aguiar.

"There is not a problem with Robbie because Robbie did well," said the head coach. "In European games you can get chances from corners or free-kicks and we felt that Ibby was better in that area. He scored a goal from a free-kick against Siroki Brijeg like that.

"I won't say why we took Pinilla off for Aguiar but we wanted to play with three strikers in the last minutes."

Taken from the Scotsman