‘I’m an idiot’ – Levein takes blame for defeat
Craig Levein last night declared himself an “idiot” and an “ass” for the tactics he deployed against Celtic.
Having seen his Hearts side beaten 3-0 by the Hoops in the Betfred Cup semi-final six days earlier, the Tynecastle boss opted to take a conservative approach in the league renewal.
“Put that one down to me. The manager’s an idiot,” said Levein with a smile.
“I thought of all the high-profile games we’ve played and I thought our energy levels were starting to wane, so I made a decision to sit in, hit Celtic on the counter-attack.
“God, I got that one wrong, eh?
“I did the players a disservice because we had more energy than I thought we did. Once you set out that way it’s very difficult to change it until half-time.
“We didn’t get it right and that is on me. The second half I thought we gave a decent showing, bearing in mind Celtic have got their tails up because they are 3-0 up, so second half was much, much better.
“But if when you take a step back and look at the situation we are sitting top of the league after 11 or 12 games and we have had to deal with a lot of problems injury wise, so all credit to the boys.
“We will just consign this to the dustbin and get back to our normal selves next week.
“But I am an ass for playing this way today.”
Celtic defender Filip Benkovic meanwhile believes his side’s 5-0 win will set them up for the clash with Leipzig.
“Of course it will help. This is a big level we will be playing in though. We must speak more and concentrate more and in that way we can do something positive,” he said.
“It’s always good to have a clean sheet but the most important thing is the team spirit because without that there is no clean sheet.
“The back four now has a few games behind us and we talk to each other in every training every day.
“This is very important because when you speak every day it makes it much easier going into the Leipzig game.”