If Robbie needs to blame anyone, it’s diver Jorge

ROBBIE NEILSON likes a moan about referees in much the same way as Keith Richards likes a cigarette. Even so, the Hearts boss can’t really believe Belgian official Lawrence Visser was to blame for his team going out of the Europa League. The wise football manager should always resist the urge to throw his players under a bus after a game or he’ll soon be the one in the firing line. None of which changes the fact that Thursday night’s play-off was lost the instant midfielder Jorge Grant tried to con the ref into giving Hearts a penalty. The score was still 0-0. He was already on a booking. And Grant’s actions were indefensible. If anything, Visser deserved praise for getting a game-defining call spot on. A 3-1 aggregate defeat to Swiss champions Zurich came with the safety net of a place in the group stage of the Europa Conference League. A clash with Fiorentina is as glam as they come. The Latvians of RFS, meanwhile, used up every one of their nine lives when they pulled off one of the biggest smash-and-grab acts in footballing history to beat Linfield on penalties. Hearts have a real and immediate chance to shake off their Europa League hangover. But that doesn’t mean they should simply shrug off that defeat to FC

Zurich and put it down as one of those things. The Swiss league TV deal is worth £18million a year — significantly less than the sums Sky Sports shell out to the SPFL. Zurich’s average crowd, meanwhile, is 3,000 less than you’d expect to find at Tynecastle for a home game against Ross County. The narrative of Hearts as brave, plucky underdogs doesn’t fit here. Meetings with Arsenal and PSV in the more prestigious Europa League were there for the taking. And failure owed more to ropey first-half finishing and a daft decision by Grant than it did to the sharp eyesight of a blameless Belgian referee.

● NEIL LENNON left Celtic under a cloud so thick he needed a miner’s headlamp to reach his car. Eighteen months later, the former Parkhead skipper has pulled off a managerial comeback by leading Cypriot club Omonia to the Europa League group stage. The reward for toppling Belgian club Gent 4-0 on aggregate includes a trip to Old Trafford to face a ropey, unpredictable Manchester United side. As Sir Alex Ferguson himself would put it: ‘Football, bloody hell…’