Hearts to go on the attack against Paksi

Manager Jim Jefferies is confident of winning the tie but is keen to seize the advantage at the Ssti Stadium in Szkesfehrvr by scoring at least one away goal. He is poised to field an attack-minded line-up in the hope of catching his Paksi counterpart, Karoly Kis, by surprise.

The Ugandan midfielder David Obua is clear to play for Hearts despite a six-hour customs delay at Budapest airport last night. That caused him to miss the team's evening training session and leaves Jefferies to decide if a player who has not trained at all in Hungary should start the match. Obua is expected to feature at some stage if not from kick-off. Regardless of whether Obua plays, Jefferies believes Hearts have the capability to defeat Paksi and steal a march on the Hungarians ahead of next week's return leg at Tynecastle.

"I feel we can beat them here," he said. "We can give ourselves a chance of winning this game, that would make it a bit easier at home. They've not got any great stars but they're a good unit and work well. If we do what we did on Saturday (against Rangers] we can cause them a lot of problems.

"I've seen Paksi twice, I've got a lot of information on them. Janos Balogh has been a big help because he knows quite a few of their players and he's friendly with their captain, who is suspended for this game. But they are a small club, they've done fantastically well to get into Europe for the first time.

"And that was a tremendous result to beat Tromso, who were 14 games into their season and lying second in the Norwegian league. They had to play on an artificial pitch over there and it looked as if it took the first 45 minutes to get used to it. We'll be stressing that this won't be easy. But, if we play as well as we can, we're more than capable of winning here."

Jefferies was due to take a decision on what role Obua will play later today after assessing the player personally. "We'll have to see what frame of mind he's in after rushing about for two days. That might have an influence on whether or not we play him," said the manager.

"I don't know (whether he will play], I haven't made up my mind. He played so well on Saturday and he stood out in pre-season, playing in an area we hadn't used him in before. He seemed to get on the ball, he was instrumental in setting up attacks and the rest of the players responded. We'll have to see because he's not trained."