Wallace chooses his words carefully after a miserable few days

Published Date: 05 October 2009
By Andrew Smith
LEE WALLACE will want to draw a veil over the past week. Plenty thought the period would see the much talked-up Hearts left-back graduate to the full Scotland squad for the country's Japan jaunt before helping end his club's lengthy winless away run in the SPL.
Instead, Danny Fox, a co-opted Scot through his grandfather, was selected ahead of Wallace for Saturday's Far East friendly before the Celtic defender lost the chance to fly to Japan when suffering a dead leg and a slight hamstring tear in training.

But, to further darken the 22-year-old Wallace's mood, he was culpable as the Gorgie side endured a mini-collapse at new St Mirren Park to extend their sequence without a league victory outside of Tynecastle to 11 games and five months.

No wonder Wallace wasn't full of the joys when facing reporters after his team handed St Mirren a first three-point haul at their new home following, neatly enough, 11 attempts since a January flit. And going reaction-chasing by pointing out that, in Fox, an Englishman has become the latest obstacle in the defender's path to the senior international recognition long championed for him, was hardly likely to provoke a magnanimous response.

Wallace, indeed, did well to skirt round what he really thought of, in all essence, a slap in the face from national coach George Burley. "I'm just prepared to get on with it. If he (Fox] has been selected, he's been selected. I just need to bide my time," Wallace said. "It's up to George whether he picks me or not. I haven't spoken to George since he was here. It's down to me to knuckle down and put performances in for him to notice."

Wallace concedes he hasn't done that consistently this season and that he is trying "to capture the form at the tail end of last season". That, indeed, might sum up Hearts' increasingly sorry lot this term.

Manager Csaba Laszlo was shaking with rage when he sought to explain an afternoon he said had provided his Hearts side with an "easy game" to win. It would have been, but for the chances they squandered in the first period after a Jose Goncalves header in 31 minutes. Certainly, credit is deserved by St Mirren for their stirring comeback that was set in motion by Steven Thomson's 38th minute equaliser and capped by a quite wonderful Craig Dargo volleyed winner in the 64th minute.

But the home side were kept in the contest by Hearts' inadequacies in front of goal. And quite shocking slapdashery in that respect by Suso Santana immediately after the opener. He took about a week to decide to shoot when a slip by Paul Gallacher had presented him with, what should have been, a goalscoring gift. His delay seemed less about poor decision-making than a desire to grandstand as he cut inside back-rushing defenders again and again. That fact made the miss – his eventual shot blocked by the combined efforts of Lee Mair and Gallacher – unforgivable.

Hearts' eighth place in the table, seven points from seven games, and ability to fall out of contests completely, as they did in the second 45 minutes on Saturday, recalls the season prior to Laszlo's arrival.

The days of Anotoly Korobochka, Stephen Frail and a bottom-six finish. Indeed, they actually claimed eight points from their opening seven games in the 2007-8 campaign.

That the parallels stack up will be enough to have the club's support reaching for the valium. On Saturday night in the St Mirren Park away dressing room, Laszlo seems to have been reaching for the tea-cups and doing his best hairdryer impression. Quite bloomin' right.

"To be honest there haven't been many times he's come in and gone berserk like that. He had a right to do it though, and we just have to get on with it," Wallace admitted. "We've got the break coming up and then we just need to learn in the next game (away to Aberdeen at Pittodrie]

"In the first-half we created enough chances and the game could have been won. They got the equaliser and the second-half was quite poor. They scored from the free-kick and it was disappointing for everyone.

"Every game home or away we just need to go and try and win. I don't know why we can't get a win away from home, but it's something we've got to rectify come the next time. I don't think any of the players have mentioned the away run at all. We're just disappointed with the game on the back of a few victories."

Hearts have decent players, performers of sufficient physical and technical ability to expect them to be among the better travellers in a league populated by lightweights. In every sense.

Yet, if they don't resolve their issues on the road when they travel the miles to Aberdeen a week on Saturday, the Tynecastle team could be shaping up – or should that be down? – as no more than SPL makeweights in the current campaign.

St Mirren manager Gus MacPherson, meanwhile, described Dargo's goal as "fit to win any game", but the striker was keen to play down his role in the triumph.

"I wouldn't say it was my best goal," he said. "I'm just happy to be off the mark. It was a good team performance from everyone and I think that counts more than the goal. The goal was a bonus. It didn't matter who got the goal, we were just looking to get the win at the new ground and now that we've done that hopefully we can build on it.

"Getting the three points was the most important thing. It has been coming; we've been unlucky here a few times.

Hopefully we can put a run together now and get as many points on the board as possible."

MAN OF THE MATCH

Craig Dargo (St Mirren)

Bagged a beauty of a first home league winner at the Paisley club's new abode that was really all his own creation. Rarely will you see a better execution of an edge-of-the box volley on the turn.

Taken from the Scotsman