By STUART BATHGATE
THE stakes were not as high, nor the events so dramatic, as they were when Hearts and Celtic met on New Year's Day, 2006. It was, nonetheless, pretty close to being a minor replay of that match, with Hearts taking the lead and dominating the first half, but then being hauled in by opponents who paced themselves better over the piece.
The score just over a year ago was 3-2 to Celtic, a result which put them seven points clear in the SPL. Yesterday's 2-1 victory was just about academic for the champions, who are 17 points clear of Rangers, but it means Hearts are now five points behind the second-placed club.

"I'm very disappointed," Valdas Ivanauskas said. "We deserved a better result. We scored the first goal and had a lot of chances for a second goal. But you know, with their lead Celtic are very self-confident. Always against Celtic you have to concentrate for the full 90 minutes, maybe 95 minutes. They have quality players who, if you make a mistake, can cost [you] a goal. And today we lose this way."

The head coach would not specify what the mistakes were, though when asked specifically about Craig Gordon said it was "not a goalkeeper problem". Ivanauskas may well feel that the biggest mistak
e was his own, when he was forced to replace Andy Driver. He said: "Andy Driver was feeling not so good at half-time. He was ill this week. He did very well in the first half, but then he said he was feeling not so good, so I had to make the change."

With no other wingers on the bench, Ivanauskas moved Neil McCann wide from his central midfield role, and replaced Driver with Calum Elliot. Normally a striker, Elliot has played in the middle of the park for the under-19s, but with Eggert Johnson and Lee Wallace on the bench, the wisdom behind the substitution was not immediately apparent.

McCann said: "For a huge period of the game I felt we were the better side, but that's how the Old Firm win championships - they keep going. [Celtic] were always going to come into it at some point with their quality, and when you don't take your chances sometimes it comes back and bites you."

Taken from the Scotsman