Hearts are red hot but Cathro prefers to play it cool
AFTER more than a month without a win, it is safe to say Hearts head coach Ian Cathro needed this.
Not only did his team end a rotten run of results by a handsome margin, but they did so with arguably the finest performance since he took over from Robbie Neilson last December.
Arguably, that is, in the sense that Cathro did not seem inclined to agree with the assessment.
Four goals from four different scorers reflected Hearts’ dominance over a listless Hamilton team but he insisted there had been no significant upgrade in his side’s play.
‘We’ve had other games in which we’ve been dominant, played well and had a lot of attacks,’ said Cathro. ‘Maybe today we were a little bit better, a bit stronger, a bit quicker — but not a massive difference. We know there has been gradual progress.’
The Tynecastle boss would doubtless have settled for something altogether more scrappy but this was a powerful and fluent showing from a team that has faced accusations of lacking fight and cohesion under his stewardship.
Long before Arnaud Djoum’s opening goal, Hearts established their superiority, even if it looked it might be a luckless afternoon as Hamilton goalkeeper Gary Woods mounted a one-man resistance job.
After only ten minutes, Woods had already staked a strong claim to be named man of the match with four excellent saves.
The one-handed stop from Jamie Walker’s header was good, his speed off the line to block Esmael Goncalves’ impressive and then he flew at full stretch to tip Sam Nicholson’s header wide.
Best of all was the stop low to his right to claw away Goncalves’ header from Leonard Sowah’s cross. The pattern continued as Walker saw another effort tipped wide and then a deflected shot from Alexandros Tziolis forced an impressive change of direction from the keeper to save again.
Just when Hamilton thought they had made it to the safe harbour of half-time, the dam burst.
Tziolis’ effort was again met by a Hamilton boot but, crucially, the deflection did not carry the ball through to the goalkeeper, instead presenting Arnaud Djoum with an irresistible invitation to slam a shot high into the net from ten yards. That moment came as a huge relief to Cathro.
‘The most pleasing aspect was the character, the calmness of the team in the first half because we were playing well, we were dominant and there were a lot of good saves,’ he added.
‘It could have reached a point where we start to feel stressed. But we stayed calm and deserved the goal before half-time.’
With Tziolis continuing to dictate the play, Hearts re-emerged looking much surer of themselves, while Hamilton remained bereft of any attacking ideas.
Goncalves saw one chopped off for offside before nabbing the second goal in bizarre fashion.
It’s rare to see a free-kick awarded under the back-pass rule but Woods — presumably in expectation of an award that never came for Hearts after Walker tumbled in the middle of the park — picked up the ball.
Don Cowie took the indirect free-kick, laying the ball off for Goncalves to lash another powerful strike past the keeper.
Ioannis Skondras lent his own personal contribution to Accies’ collapse, first ceding possession to Walker and then hauling the winger down as he embarked on goal. The 23-year-old’s free-kick was perfectly executed, finding the top corner of the net.
Whether the free-kick from which substitute Malaury Martin completed the scoring was avoidable is open to debate. Woods got at least one hand on the ball as it dipped towards his goal but, by this stage, it would not have been fair to apportion blame to the one man who had given Hamilton a chance of getting a result.