THE Hearts centre-back Marius Zaliukas believes his team's home win over Hull City on Sunday shows they are ready for the new SPL season. The Tynecastle side won 1-0 thanks to a first-half headed goal from Audrius Ksanavicius, and Zaliukas suggested the result showed how the team had improved since their visit to Germany last month.
"We lost two games against Bundesliga teams then, and now we have won against a Premiership side," Zaliukas said. "We have one week to fix our small problems and we will be ready."
Hearts lost both their matches against Bundesliga Two sides last m
onth, going down 1-0 to Kaiserslautern then 2-1 to Wehen Wiesbaden. As a warm-up to those matches they beat Rheingau-Auswahl, a regional select, 6-0, and until the Hull game that was their only win since Csaba Laszlo took over as manager. On his debut on 14 July Laszlo saw his team draw with Glentoran, then two days later they lost to Dunfermline.
The need for an experienced striker was glaringly exposed in some of those matches, but Zaliukas argued that if one did not come in before the beginning of the season Hearts would still be able to achieve some positive results. "We need a striker, of course," the defender said. "But the most important thing is to keep a clean sheet. I think we can do that, and we will score one or two in a game."
Laryea Kingston and Ruben Palazuelos both picked up knocks against Hull but are expected to be ready for Saturday's match against Motherwell. Meanwhile, Robbie Neilson, who has been out of action for the past month with an Achilles injury, is set to resume individual training this week. The full-back then hopes to return to full training with the first-team squad within the next few weeks.
The full article contains 318 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
