We have a hell of a job on our hands tonight,ok we have a one away goal advantage from the 1st leg but there is still a long hard night ahead of us. Hope Craigs boys keep their nerve and do us proud. Speaking of proud this article about Hearts fans in Bordeaux is taken from todays Edinburgh Evening news. http://www.edinburghnews.com/football.cfm?id=1307752003
Bordeaux 2 - 0 Hearts http://www.uefa.com/competitions/UEFACup/fixturesresults/round=1719/match=73665/Report=RP.html Too bad. The Bordeaux goal in the 8th must have made it rough, but Hearts stood firm until the 66th minute when the home side pulled away. Despite numerous chances Hearts could not find the away goal to see them through.
Last couple of years in Europe Bordeaux have been eliminated by clubs they should be beating. (Roda JC in '01 and Anderlecht in '02) so there was precident here for them to lose again to a so called "smaller club" than them. Surprising they pulled through in the end and advanced.
It says a lot about how far we have come when we're disappointed about losing to Bordeaux. Last night they were very good going forward on the counter attack but were a bit dodgy defending crosses. They scored 2 fantastic goals (esp. 1st one) and despite a great effort, we never looked like scoring. Mark de Vries played up front and was totally isolated for most of the game. He had no support and we couldn't keep the ball. We needed to score even at 1-0 but a 2nd forward (Andy Kirk) didn't get on until the 70th minute.
The similarities between the Hearts defeat last night and Scotland's defeat by Holland are striking. 1) surprise first leg 1-0 victory quickly overturned in the second leg (although not as spectacularly last night). 2) missing a very important player from the 1st game for the second game (Pressley for Hearts, Christain Dailly for Scotland) 3) hopes unduly raised by media etc. after the 1st game, failing to realise a) that the opposition was somewhat unlucky and b) that the opposition would raise their game second time round 4) falling in love with tactics that worked in the 1st leg. Scotland continued with the 4-4-2 in Amsterdam though caution should have been the 1st priority, and Hearts continued with only one striker far too long last night and allowed Bordeaux to dominate the first 35 minutes. Having said that, both teams have shown improvement in the sense that they put themselves in a position to win, which has not been the case recently. The usual situation for a lesser SPL team has been to return from a tough tie away with a 2-0 (Hibs v AEK Athens) or 3-0 defeat (St Johnstone v Monaco, Kilmarnock v Kaiserslautern) and then puting up a good but insufficient effort in the second game. But you are not going to win very often from 2-0 or 3-0 down in a second game at home, even if you have the better side (eg Scotland U21 v Croatia U21). So Hearts can say they have improved and will learn for next season. And fortunately for Hearts, there should be a "next season" in Europe for them soon, as they clearly look the third side this year given the demise of Dundee and weakness of others.
add to that - the "favourite" was heavily critised in their own media in the aftermath of the 1st game and possibly produced a response. I wouldn't say that Hearts will be fortunate to be in Europe next season - its not some kind of lottery and we were picked out - we are the 3rd best team in Scotland! Yes what happened to Dundee was unfortunate but in order to compete with us they have almost gone bust so we must be given credit.