Hearts 1 Inverness 0

Csaba Laszlo’s side put their wage worries to the back of their minds to go on and claim their fourth win of the season.

And they did it by sitting in on their own patch and hitting Caley on the counter rather than trying to blow them away after going ahead early on.

Eccentric boss Laszlo later claimed that was down to a tactical masterstroke by HIM — although Berra confessed he had no idea what he was talking about.

But after seeing Hearts move temporarily into second spot in the SPL he admitted he had loved the manner of his side’s victory.

He said: “The most pleasing thing is we ground out the result.

“We didn’t play our best football and Inverness counter attacked very well. But you can’t win pretty every game, sometimes you just have to grind out a result.

“Every top team does it, look at Chelsea, they have been doing it for years.

“That’s the most pleasing thing. Sometimes you get more satisfaction from grinding out a 1-0 win than you would from winning 4-0 or 5-0.

“We know we put a lot of effort in and we deserved it. It’s another great three points and now we are looking forward to next week.”

Hearts got off to the perfect start when Saulius Mikoliunas latched on to Audrius Ksanavicius’s through pass and danced round Michael Fraser to put Hearts ahead.

Michael Stewart was unlucky not to put them further ahead when he saw a volley tipped over by Fraser after fine play by Lee Wallace.

And with Laryea Kingston buzzing on one side and Mikoliunas looking lively on the other you expected the Jambos to add to their lead.

But as the game wore on it was Caley who began to make the running with Hearts sitting back and looking to hit them on the counter attack.

Slovakian keeper Marion Kello had to make a series of fine blocks to preserve their advantage, much to the frustration of Brewster, who rightly felt his team deserved a point.

But despite saves from Roy McBain, Dougie Imrie and Phil McGuire, Jambos gaffer Laszlo bizarrely insisted Hearts restricted Caley to no chances in front of goal.

Laszlo said: “When we scored after ten minutes I think everybody was expecting us to win 5-0, but this was not possible.

“We had chances but we didn’t take them and the most important thing was what we did tactically.

“We changed the tactics completely. I am not going to tell you what we did but I know we did it and the team did it very well.

“We gave our opponents space and we looked to be dangerous on the counter attack.

“I didn’t see Inverness have any shots. They came forward but we didn’t let them have any chances. For me this is football, not winning 5-0.

“Tactically this is the best I have seen from my team.” But when asked just what Laszlo had done, Berra was unable to come up with an answer.

He added: “I don’t think the gaffer changed the system at half-time.

“We were under a bit of pressure and we sat deep but that’s football, we sucked up the pressure and we counter attacked.”

Caley boss Brewster said: “I thought we deserved something, we played well.

“Maybe there was a lack of concentration for the goal, Mikoliunas’s pace hurts us and he finished it well.

“We’re just not getting on the end of things in the final third, not doing enough. But I have to be pleased with the performance overall.

“You have got to give credit to Hearts, I thought their back four defended really well. They made it difficult for us.”