Gutted Hearts manager Robbie Neilson looked back at the seven-goal thriller in the cinch Scottish Premiership at Tynecastle against Celtic and said: “We scored three goals and had other opportunities, but we lost and we ended up taking nothing from the game.”
He added: “The goals we lost were not great goals to loose. The first one a deflection flicks up and we should be reacting. We need to defend better.”
Neilson believes there are issues with VAR and said: “There is a lot of ironing out to do. Today, we had the novelty of it, but if we are going to have that in a months time, three months time or six months time it will be more a hindrance than a good.
“There were discrepancies. The first one isn’t given and goes to VAR and the second was given. My worry is that it take the strength of the decision making process away from the referees.
“The first one everybody in the stadium can see was a penalty and for me it was a clear cut, stone wall. It should be given, we should not have to wait but it took three, four, five six minutes to give that decision.
“My understanding was that the referee was unsure (over the first penalty), whatever that means.”
The manager said: “We have to take that performance into every week. We have been up and down recently and we have a massive game on Thursday against Riga (the Latvian champions) in Europe and if we can take that energy, that intensity into the game then we can win it.”
Cameron Devlin (pictured by Nigel Duncan in training) won the Man of the Match award and Neilson was asked if that was the real Devlin. Neilson said: “He has energy he is about forward passing and getting forward, and I thought he did that well.”
On Lawrence Shankland, who came on as a substitute for Stephen Humphrys after 38 minutes, he said: “To his credit, he did not start the game and I thought it would be more beneficial to have Stephen (Humphrys) up there but he said: “Lawrence is a goal scorer.”
Humphrys received a knock on the foot and he should be fine for Thursday and Josh Ginnelly had tight hamstring.
Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou said that you saw it last year and you have seen it this season that over the course of a season you can be your best and play dominating football but over the course of the season your get different challenges.
He added: “You have to find the will, desire to win a games of football and this group of players has got an abundance of that sort of character and they refuse to yield and they find a way to win and I thought that in a tough environment today it was a credit to them that they did.”
He said there was a lot going on including the crowd, VAR and there was a slick pitch surface due to heavy rain and Postecogllou added: “It is very easy to get distracted by that. To maintain focus and discipline in the context of that was a credit to the players. They could very easily have walked off and said it was not our day today but they found a way to win.”
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