Rebooting their top-six placing

Published on Sunday 6 May 2012 00:57

Forget Hampden, Hearts’ focus is on league, finds Moira Gordon

A LAST-GASP scrap for a European place was not what Paulo Sergio envisaged when he took over as Hearts manager earlier this season.

Replacing a man who had guided the side to third last term, the Portuguese could have been forgiven for thinking that everything was in place for him to close the gap on the Old Firm. Instead, as the SPL campaign reaches its denouement, his players are locked in a tight contest with St Johnstone for fifth place and the guarantee of a shot at the Europa League qualifiers next season. If the Perth side leave Tynecastle today with all three points, that battle is lost. If Hearts can win there remains the outside chance of climbing as high as fourth place.

But, while that is a lower than last season, Sergio insists there have been mitigating circumstances, with his squad enduring the uncertainty of delayed wages and the subsequent rigmarole of having to take their grievances to the players’ union and then to the SPL. There was also the need to cut costs which impacted on his squad, with players leaving and his first-choice goalkeeper frozen out, and there being little quality in reserve or money in the pot to fill personnel gaps short-term.

“If you want to do justice to this team, after losing five important players in January and with all the other stuff, at that moment we made a target to be in the top six and we’ve achieved that and we’re in a cup final so we have to speak very positive about this season,” he said. “But we’re fighting every single day to win games. That’s the way I am and I want my players to think like that.”

The club’s young player of the year, Ryan McGowan, is one who has exemplified that fighting spirit, growing in stature and popularity throughout the campaign. He says they have to make the most of their final two league games to ensure they better the sixth position they currently occupy.

Asked if that would be considered good enough, especially with the Scottish Cup final offering a possible other route into Europe, McGowan was not convinced. “No, I don’t think it is. With the size of the club and the players we have, probably not, but, then again, it has not been a normal season.”

“Maybe [people forget what the squad has been through],” said Sergio. “There are lots of things that you don’t even know and I’m not even going to speak about it. I have to say, too, we have players struggling and, at the end of the season, they’re going to do surgeries to fix a few problems. We’ve had bad luck with knee problems, hernia problems, we’ve had lots of problems with injuries during the season. But we’re in the top six fighting with them. We lost here to Rangers in a game that was too easy for them. They scored two easy goals. We went to Dundee and showed determination and we got a point [against United]. Against Motherwell, it was disappointing. The only save Jamie made, they had a second ball to score. We created chances in the first and second.”

Luck, he says, has been as limited as drama-free weeks, since his arrival at Tynecastle. “It’s hard to say, sometimes you win games without playing very well but I believe we lost a lot more points than we deserved to from certain games. We want to keep focus and work to change these things. There are moments, without doing great things, you are scoring and controlling the games. Other moments we need to look at what we’re doing and I believe we have to do much more to get a result.”

But McGowan added: “If we can maybe sneak fourth and win the cup then it could turn out to be quite a successful season.”

And with that Hampden showdown now looming large, he wants to get European matters confirmed as soon as possible to lessen the cup final stake.

“That would obviously be good and that is what we are aiming for. We have another two difficult games against St Johnstone here and Celtic away and we want to win both those games and hopefully have Europe secured before the cup final.”

The scalps of both those clubs were claimed along that journey to the 19 May curtain call, which renders them even more dangerous. First up is Steve Lomas’s side, who, despite the cup disappointment, have enjoyed decent results in the league against the Gorgie team.

“I wouldn’t say they are our bogey team but we always have really hard-fought games against them and this will be no different,” says McGowan. “I think they will want a little bit of revenge for the cup, although we felt we had done enough afterwards to get that result. But this will be a big game.”

The relative merit of their league campaign rests on the outcome, while starting berths at Hampden also hinge on the next couple of games. McGowan said: “We know we need to be switched on to stay in the team and we also want to generate a bit of form going into the final – we don’t want to go into that match on the back of a few spankings. As players, we can focus on each game but I think the fans are more worried about the cup final. You get it in the street too, it’s what is in the forefront of everyone’s minds.”

Everyone but the players and staff. For now, they have a league season to salvage.

Taken from the Scotsman