HEARTS MANAGER Craig Levein admits that facing Celtic is his side’s toughest challenge of the season but has promised his supporters that his team will attack the 7 in a Row Scottish Champions today in an attempt to win the match and stay at the top of the league.
“This is as tough as it comes, other than going away to Parkhead,” Hearts Levein admitted.
“To a certain extent we had some success last season, particularly in the two home matches. When I watched back over both games they were actually very similar.
“The scoreline wasn’t but in the second match we got a perfectly good goal disallowed to go 1-0 up and I’m sure that would have made a big difference in the match. That was a sore one to get a poor refereeing decision like that that could have decided the outcome of the game.”
Having watched the re-runs of the two high scoring games between the sides at Tynecastle last season, Levein is convinced that the way to go is to give Celtic more of the same.
“I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t employ the same tactics that we did in both of the home matches we had – we did the same in the away match as well. That would be telling Brendan what we’re going to do, but I think he would know anyway.”
Rodgers may know how Hearts will play but with Levein having 13 summer signings in his squad for the new term, the personnel may be somewhat different. However expect to see the two ex-Rangers players who refused to TUPE over to Sevco in 2012 – Kyle Lafferty, Steven Naismith – start.
Levein failed to mention that Naismith should have been sent off for a horrible, cowardly tackle on Scott Brown in Celtic’s last visit to Tynecastle.
And does anyone else think that Lafferty’s move to Ibrox has been delayed so that he can try to continue his good scoring form against Celtic today before completing his move “back” to Rangers.
Have a look at what the a former Celtic star thinks about that HERE.
Levein may have more options than last term but expect these two Zombies to start and the Hearts manager knows that his players are all eager to get a chance to get into Celtic’s faces.
“The thing about Celtic games is I don’t need to prepare them for it,” continued Levein. “The excitement, the size of the fixture, the publicity, the interest, is something that they all infuse through different things through the week.
“There is a definite build-up of tension coming into a game like this. Players can’t get away from that. My real challenge at times is keeping them just underneath the line that dictates whether it gets overly aggressive or not.
“I don’t have any issues about them understanding the nature of this match or feeling that we’re going into a game where we need to be at our absolute best to compete and make it a level playing field. Keeping them calm will be the challenge more than anything.
“A lot of these players are here for this type of fixture. They’re here because they want to be involved in front of a full house, in a game live on TV which can enhance them as players and their profiles.
“This league is widely covered by TV. Where some of our players have been, they haven’t been exposed to the TV coverage and media interest they’re going to get here. This game for them is the first one this season that they’re going to be excited about.”
Levein was at Celtic Park on Wednesday night to see Celtic for himself and to try to give him some pointers for today.
“Celtic are not an awful lot different to last season,” the Hearts boss said.
“On Wednesday night, they changed shape a couple of times and they know what they’re doing, but when it comes to playing at Tynecastle I think it’s important that we play with lots of energy, enthusiasm and make the game as competitive as possible.
“We are stuck in between the two most important games of their season right now, certainly financially.
“I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Brendan brought in a couple of bodies between now and the weekend. With that result, I think there will be an urgency to speed up any process of strengthening their squad.”
Levein struggles to give a fair assessment of his own squad, never mind Celtic’s, as it is still so early in the season.
“I have no idea of where we are at the moment. We’ve got a lot of new players and some of them aren’t up to full speed yet,” he said.
“I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made but we haven’t played Celtic or a lot of teams in the league who could test us severely. I’m hopeful things are heading in the right direction.
“I just feel that if we want to improve we’ve got to compete with Celtic.
“I think we’re getting there but they do have a significant advantage over us with the size of budget. We do everything we can to try and turn things in our favour to give us the best chance of winning.”
