Playmaker Meshino is flying high

FROM the carnival city of Recife, to party time in Gorgie, Ryo Meshino has had a decent week or so. The Japanese playmaker, on loan at Hearts from Manchester City, scored an absolute peach for the Jambos yesterday.

Considering jet lag meant he probably didn’t know what day it was, he deserved every moment of his celebration.

Meshino flew to Brazil with Japan’s Under-22 side for a friendly last week, marking his first appearance for the team by contributing to a 3-2 victory for his nation.

Hearts boss Craig Levein said: ‘All credit to the wee fella. We’ve got two at either end of the scale. Glenn Whelan was away with the Republic of Ireland playing two important matches.

‘But he’s got 90 caps or whatever and is so used to coming back from international duty and just stepping in to a big match. When you’re young like Ryo, it’s different. You go away and there’s all the excitement, the traveling, he’s playing against Brazil.

‘He tired but he did enough in the time he was on the field to contribute heavily, particularly with the goal. It wasn’t an easy finish.’

Two weeks out from their Betfred Cup semi-final against Rangers at Hampden Park, this was an important point for Hearts.

And Levein said: ‘In every game you want to do two things well. You want to defend properly and attack with a real threat. The worst you want to get is at least defending properly and being committed and competitive. I thought we did that.

‘Some of our play was good but we can attack better. We spoke about stopping Rangers getting into any sort of rhythm and I didn’t feel that they got into any today.

‘I didn’t feel they started opening us up and the players have to take a huge amount of credit for that.’

Hearts skipper Christophe Berra said yesterday’s performance sent out a message ahead of the cup clash with Rangers, declaring: ‘It showed we aren’t going to just show up and be turned over.

‘Hampden is a different game, it’s a bigger pitch and a completely different scenario.

‘We will need the same kind of performance — but even better — at Hampden.

‘We need to get ourselves up that league and start winning games.

‘We have let ourselves down and we have let the club and the fans down in the last spell of games.

‘I don’t know what the record is but it’s been well documented and we will take this result with a pinch of salt and try to build on it.’

Praising striker Uche Ikpeazu, Berra said: ‘He was massive. In this type of game where the full-backs are bombing on, he runs into space and isolates the centre-half.

‘Nobody wants to be left one-on-one with him as he’s big, quick, strong and powerful.

‘He has had a few good matches recently and he needs to do it next week as well.

‘We all need to put in the work against lesser teams as we are nowhere near the standard of being able to just turn up and win.

‘We need to grind out wins and win games the hard way first. This is a small step but it’s been nowhere near good enough.’

Singling out Meshino for special mention, Berra added: ‘He’s a happy go lucky and chirpy kind of guy.

‘There is no doubt he has a lot of attributes and is technically very good.

‘There are also things he needs to work on as he’s only been over for one month or so.

‘As the weeks and months go on he’ll adapt even more and improve his all-round game. He’s two-footed and he did really well to keep his finish down.’