FOLLOW US ON TWITTER | FACEBOOK
Hearts manager Craig Levein admits watching a rerun of last weekend’s goal-less draw with Aberdeen made him even more disappointed that his side did not collect all three points.
Levein was denied a winning return to the dugout as Dons goalkeeper Joe Lewis pulled off a series of stunning saves in a man of the match performance at Murrayfield.
Although delighted with the endeavour his side showed to halt the visitors’ flawless Premiership start, Levein claimed his side felt ‘robbed’.
The former Scotland manager’s mood was not helped when he sat down to analyse the hugely encouraging 90 minutes.
Levein, whose team will bid to collect their first win at Hamilton since 2011 on Saturday, said: “I didn’t realise that we had so many chances, I knew we had a few but I didn’t realise we had as many as we had so that’s probably increased my disappointment slightly.
“The way we played I was happy with, other than the first 20 minutes of the match when we didn’t quite deal with Aberdeen’s starting system.
“But once we got that sorted out we grew into the game and I thought in the second half we were excellent.
“I hope (that sets the standard for moving forward), it would be a travesty to put that amount of effort in to then go into the Hamilton game and not turn up.
“That’s my biggest concern and I have to make sure the players are as ready for this match against Hamilton as they were against Aberdeen.”
Ghost town
The visit of the Dons was played in front of nearly 25,000 fans at Murrayfield in what was the first of three ‘home’ matches for Hearts at the neighbouring 67,100 capacity stadium.
Hearts defender John Souttar has praised the supporters for contributing to a memorable atmosphere after fearing that the home of Scottish rugby would feel like a ‘ghost town’.
He said: “I thought it was a really nice experience, Murrayfield is a beautiful stadium and the atmosphere was good.
“It was a good atmosphere and I think the boys lived up to that.
“When we were there the day before, we thought this could be a ghost town because it looked that big but on the day of the game you could never tell because there was that much noise and they made it a really good day.”
Souttar, meanwhile, hopes training on artificial grass on Thursday and Friday at the club’s Oriam base will stand the players in good stead for playing on Accies’ synthetic surface on Saturday.
Speaking to Hearts TV, the Scotland Under-21 internationalist said: “It’s a completely different game from the grass.
“You wouldn’t imagine everything is so different; the way you check, the way you move is so different.
“That gives them an edge but I think if we play like we did last weekend then I think we’ll be fine.
“That will certainly help that we’re training on the astro on Thursday and Friday.
“Obviously we’ve not won there since 2011 so it’s going to be a tough, tough game on the astro, which is never easy.
“We want to build up some momentum now, we played well at the weekend so hopefully we can start producing wins.”
