JJ defends Thomson after Hearts defeat

Jefferies cited inexperience as the cause of Thomson's error and explained that the 19-year-old full-back should learn from the episode. He cautioned against criticising such a young player.

"He's only a young kid and he'll learn from it hopefully," said Jefferies. "We said at half-time that the one lesson we had to learn is that we can't give the ball away easily. You've got to make sure you pass it well. Lo and behold, maybe we shouldn't have said anything, Craig Thomson's got nobody near him. I don't know why he had a rush of blood to try and play a ball first time that he could easily have controlled. The boy (Silva) still had a lot to do and from their point of view it's a great goal, but I think defensively we should not have allowed him to get where he was. He received the ball easily because it was a ball Craig could've stopped and passed it to three or four people. But he's hit a first-time ball without looking and Silva's picked it up. We didn't defend it well.

"Our defence has not been bad over the season but that was a bad goal to lose. The second was probably worse because Eremenko was one we had targeted. Anything in and around the box you've got to be on top of him. We didn't pick up his run and he's pulled off a neat finish." Jefferies had been pleased with Hearts' opening to the match but admitted erratic passing handed Kilmarnock the initiative.

"Templeton was unlucky with a header which hit the bar in the first half. Those breaks either go for you or not," he said. "After 25 minutes we were guilty of giving the ball away too easily.

"We had been up on the ball, passing it well and giving it to the nearest man. Then we suddenly start looking for hard balls and they weren't coming off.

"Kilmarnock is the last team you want to do that against because they have some decent players and are very good at hitting you on the break."

Taken from the Scotsman