Hearts boss Csaba Laszlo hits back at St Mirren over refusal to shift Saturday's SPL match

Feb 20 2009 By Craig Swan

CSABA LASZLO last night blasted the smear campaign against Hearts and insisted they are not the bad guys in the St Mirren fixture row.

The Tynecastle club have come under heavy fire after their decision not to switch tomorrow's SPL clash back 24 hours in the wake of Sky's decision to screen last night's Scottish Cup tie between Saints and Motherwell.

Paisley boss Gus MacPherson is annoyed his team now face two games in less than 48 hours, but Laszlo insists Buddies chiefs created their own problems by accepting the TV dough and moving from Tuesday to Thursday.

Hearts would have incurred huge financial losses on pre-booked ticket sales and hospitality packages had they moved from Saturday and also upset their season-ticket holders.

On the other hand Saints had the bonus of collecting s82,500 from Sky and Laszlo said:

"I don't know why we at Hearts are the bad guys. This is not a decision of my technical team. This is a decision of the club and I'm an employee.

"If they tell me - or the SPL tell me - we must play Sunday at 2pm, I accept this. I can't go and tell them to look out for St Mirren. Everybody must look after themselves.

"If you refuse the s80,000 from the TV money you can play on Monday of this week and you are fit for Saturday.

"Now Hearts is the bad team, the bad club. This is not true. Believe me, there are so many solutions. We must look for them and why didn't we look together for a solution and then we wouldn't have this discussion.

"It is legitimate for us to ask for Saturday and it is legitimate for St Mirren to ask to play on Sunday. What's the answer? I respect the question from their coach and the club and I hope it will be a good game and we win.

"But I hope nobody talks afterwards and says we won because St Mirren played after a second day. This is my opinion. I respect every opponent and coach and I am sorry for this but this is life. We want the top six and we have the chance to get three points.

"There is no guarantee their players will be tired or not concentrated. Maybe they will give extra power on Saturday. In the UK especially, it is not a new thing to play two games in three or four days.

"St Mirren and Motherwell were trying for the best result but the players would also give 100 per cent in the league on Saturday.

"The players and coaches have experience of it, so it's not a big handicap.

"I was in the same situation twice at Ferencvaros. Once we won, once we lost.

"It's not a big advantage to us."

Laszlo has handed the Hearts fans an update on the progress of trialists Arunas Klimavicius and Graeme Barrett.

The 26-year-old Lithuanian defender is on a week-long assessment after leaving Dynamo Moscow, while freed Falkirk striker Barrett is also at Riccarton.

Laszlo admits he's not fan of assessing players on trial but insists needs must due to a squad shortage.

He said: "Everybody knows we have a problem in central defence. We didn't get Pavol Farkas and now Marius Zaliukas has a suspension problem. Arunas was freed by Dynamo Moscow after playing 11 or 12 games for them.

That is a good standard.

"I also watched Scotland v Lithuania on DVD and the guy did a good job. This week I have time to decide his future. I think we need somebody until May in this position.

"I don't like to go into details but you can see in training he is a complete player.

"Barrett is also very interesting. This week and maybe next week he can stay with us and we can decide if we give him a chance for the rest of the season."

Laszlo shrugged aside claims that another Lithuanian is being foisted upon him by Tynecastle supremo Vladimir Romanov.

He said: "If I get 11 good players from Lithuania I don't have anything against that."

Taken from the Daily Record