Dons defeat will not dent Hearts’ bid to split Old Firm
Gary Mackay-Steven insists Hearts are still intent on disrupting the domestic domination of Scottish football’s Big two. robbie neilson’s men lost their unbeaten league record after blowing a 1-0 lead against aberdeen at Pittodrie on Sunday. yet former Dons favourite Mackay-Steven believes everyone — including celtic and rangers — is going to slip up and lose ground in an ultra-competitive top flight.
‘there is more than just the Old Firm in this league,’ said the winger. ‘celtic dropped points on Saturday, too. teams will take points off the Old Firm.
‘they are favourites, we have played both already and know their strengths. aberdeen took points off rangers. there are a lot of good teams, everyone will take points off each other through the course. We just need to concentrate on ourselves.
‘When you are not at the races, good teams punish you — and aberdeen did that to us.
‘We won’t dwell on this. there’s a lot of confidence in the dressing room and positivity. We need to just go again next week.’
On the prospects of Hearts putting together another 11-game unbeaten run to keep themselves in the title race, Mackay-Steven said: ‘We have got a good team, good players. So it never surprised me we had a good start.
‘there’s no reason why we can’t go again. as we found out against aberdeen, though, you have to be at it every game.’
Hearts’ defensive woes may have been painful for those of a maroon persuasion but anyone with an eye for ‘clever’ set-pieces couldn’t fail to be impressed by Lewis Ferguson’s winning goal.
Scott Brown and ryan Hedges making dummy runs before turning to ‘argue’ with each other, before the skipper pushes his team-mate directly into the path of Beni Baningime, preventing the Hearts midfielder from tracking the run of Ferguson. Flagrant? Or genius? Maybe a bit of both.
Dons assistant allan russell takes great joy in devising schemes intended to create a clear path for players to attack set-pieces; witness Brown’s own free header for his team’s second goal against rangers last Wednesday night.
Ferguson, who certainly enjoyed his role as match winner, revealed: ‘We spend a lot of time working on them with allan. you’ve seen in the past week or so it is paying off.
‘So credit goes to the staff for coming up with these set-pieces and making us practise them in training. Because, when you put the work in, you get your results.’
the Dons were worthy winners, the fact that they came back from a goal down — thanks to a change of formation and a clever tweak in tactics — adding credence to the idea that Stephen Glass might know what he’s doing, after all.
His team were arguably unlucky to trail to a John Souttar penalty in stoppage time of a first half almost without incident.
needing to find a reaction, Glass abandoned the formation that had delivered a home victory over Hibs and a creditable draw at Ibrox.
Brown was shifted forward out of the back three, leaving a flat back four, and the impact was instant.
the former celtic captain, easily the best player on the park, was quickly involved in the build-up to the equaliser, nicking the ball off cameron Devlin inside the Hearts box. keeping his team on the front foot, his effort was instantly repaid as Marley Watkins took a Hedges cutback on his thigh and beat craig Gordon with a strike into the top corner.
With Ferguson freed from his defensive duties in the middle of the park, the all-action midfielder was encouraged to wander.
the only way Hearts could find to stop Ferguson, in fact, resulted in sub andy Halliday being shown a red card with just a minute of the 90 remaining; he wasn’t even close to making contact with the ball.
‘I don’t know if it was a bad one,’ said Ferguson. ‘I thought it was high. He apologised, so there’s no hard feelings.’
ABERDEEN (3-4-1-2): Lewis 6; Bates 6, Brown 8, McCrorie 6; Ojo 6, McGeouch 7 (McGinn 87), Ferguson 7, Campbell 6; Hedges 7; Watkins 7 (Hayes 84), Ramirez 6. Subs not used: Woods, Emmanuel-Thomas, Gurr, Samuels, Longstaff. Booked: Campbell, Brown. HEARTS (3-4-2-1): Gordon 7; Souttar 7, Halkett 6, Kingsley 6; Smith 5, Baningime 5, Devlin 5, Cochrane 5 (Halliday 72); Ginnelly 5 (Woodburn 57), Mackay-Steven 5 (McKay 57); Gnanduillet 6. Subs not used: Stewart, Haring, McEneff, Moore. Booked: Halkett, Woodburn. Sent off: Halliday. Man of the match: Scott Brown. Referee: Kevin Clancy. Attendance: 9,736.