Head coach Neil Critchley says Hearts have an opportunity to respond in tomorrow night’s Conference League match against Petrocub.
The Jambos come into the fixture knowing that three points will guarantee European football at Tynecastle after Christmas and Critchley admits he’s eager to see a response following a disappointing day at the weekend.
Speaking at the pre-match press conference Critchley said:
“Losing football games is not nice. But again, with this game, the beauty of the game is you always get to put it right in the next game, and our next game is a really important game for us. We've obviously reflected on what happened and how we played at the weekend, and we need to do a lot better than what we did.
"So, the next opportunity is a big game for the Football Club, so I'm really looking forward to seeing our response.
“I know this is a big job, big club, big expectations. That was one of the attractions and reasons for coming here, I was ready for that challenge. Obviously when a manager comes into the club with a situation that was there at the time, then obviously things aren't right.
"So, you get a time to assess, make your own observations, I think I've been here now long enough to start to make assessments of certain things, and then that's how you formulate your plan to move forward.
“Obviously, we have the opportunity to progress in a European competition. We want to get into the latter stages and progress, and we have an opportunity to do that, it's in our hands.
"We were going through all the possible permutations and all kinds of scenarios yesterday and we gave up after about five minutes and just thought, let's just concentrate on doing our best to win the game, and if we do that then we can put that to rest for a few months and look to then improve our domestic form, because we've got a really important period coming up with lots of games in a short period of time.”
The men in maroon take on Moldovan side Petrocub, who have already been eliminated from the competition, however Critchley admits that he is expecting a difficult match.
“There are no give-me's in European football, they're there for a reason, and if you look at their recent results, they've been very close games, very tight games, so if we're just expecting to turn up and win and roll them over, then it won't happen, that's not going to happen like that.
“You have to earn everything you get on the pitch, and we'll have to enforce the way we want to play onto them, and we have to make sure our cause is greater than theirs and that has to be reflected on the pitch."
You can watch Neil’s press conference in full on Hearts TV.
