Hearts humbled but no need for doom and gloom, insists Jim Jefferies

IT was the end of Hearts' unbeaten run, not the end of the world. That was the message from Jim Jefferies yesterday in the wake of his team's heaviest defeat of the season, a 4-0 humbling at Celtic Park.

With Celtic now ten points clear of Jefferies' third-placed side, the emphatic nature of Wednesday night's defeat has been widely seen as representing the death of Hearts' championship challenge. The Tynecastle manager, however, challenged that viewpoint on two fronts.

First, throughout his team's 11-game unbeaten run in the legaue, he had always claimed they were simply striving to have as good a season as possible rather than taking a tilt at the title. And second, if Hearts had drawn with Celtic and with Rangers four days earlier, instead of losing to the former and beating the Ibrox club 1-0, those two points would have been interpreted as keeping them in contention. Why then should a three-point haul from the two games be viewed in a harsher light?

"To come out of it with three points out of the six is not doom and gloom," Jefferies said. "It would be great if we got the six - we would be sitting here asking question if we are going to win the league.

"We've never said anything about being there: we set out to have a good season. If it takes us close to the top two, great. We have nothing to feel down about, it's about bouncing back and the players have shown a lot of character. The run of the last 12 games has been fantastic.

"We set out to have a good season and our remit was to make sure we were at least challenging for third place. We are on track to have a good season and achieve that.

"Remember, last year this team was struggling a bit and you can't come in in one season and turn it round and win a championship, you have to be realistic. The players have shown great improvement on last year and we will continue to do that and we'll see where it takes us at the end of the season." Jefferies had warned before the last two games that the Old Firm had the ability to up their standards whenever a challenge from elsewhere emerged, and that warning was proven correct. Hearts were able to withstand a first-half onslaught from Rangers before taking the points with a late goal from Ryan Stevenson, but their defence did not come close to that level against Celtic.

"Saturday first half we got away with it and played well in the second half," the manager continued. "Last night there was not a lot in it the first half and Celtic played well in the second half. I think in the last half hour we let ourselves down. I have been at a couple of midweek games with Celtic where there has been very little crowd, the atmosphere has not been great and they've not been the greatest games.But you can see the impact with Hearts doing well that there was a great atmosphere and their fans, as ours were, were great in getting behind the team.

"Celtic are the only team to have beaten us away from home and if we go this season with Celtic beating us away from home a couple of times, we would be saying it's a marvellous record. There is a chance for us to bounce back and try and go on as good a run as we've been on.

"I said to the players you won't win every point between now and the end of the season, it's about how you react. We went into the game in a good situation with the Rangers win and then we played a team that had one of their best performances this season and they were too good for us, aided by a poor defensive record in the second half."

Although acknowledging that his team are still some way short of matching the Old Firm when they are at the top of their form, Jefferies hopes that his players will come back stronger from the experience of the last few days. "Just keep doing what you're doing," he said when asked what his message to the squad was.

"Sometimes the pressure itself or the mental tiredness comes in because you are producing it week in, week out. And then you go in against the top two who are used to it because they have to face it every week in terms of teams raising their game and playing against them.

"You'll know what to expect if you're in the same position again, how well you have to do. We talked about it afterwards about what they've achieved and that they maybe let themselves down a little bit last night. Put it this way, if we win on Saturday no-one will bother about Wednesday."

With the Glasgow clubs both involved in Co-operative Insurance Cup semi-finals this weekend, that match on Saturday against St Johnstone gives Hearts a chance to close the gap again. But Derek McInnes' team won the Scottish Cup match at Tynecastle between the clubs just a fortnight ago, so will return to Edinburgh in confident mood.