Gordon's Golden Notebook- Moscow

Blah, blah, blah, blah, the "man in the know" etc..decided not to have a wee story concerning this as E-Tims do that sort if thing far better than me and we all know it's written in ma hut in an attempt to be funny.

Attack, attack, defend, defend...what shall we do this evening? Scoring an away goal was vital but i remember the unsureness that engulfed us when we played Ajax at CP after oor victory in Amsterdam.

This tie is balanced on a knife edge and with us not having the luck of the draw means that we are playing a team that would have come, and have the ability, to Glesga to score anyway. They now need to score, which means we need to score, for me, at least two to ensure oor passage to the group stages.

Oor manager says that he husnae got the heart to tell his players to sit back a view back up by Scott McDonald. The manager says about Donati and Brown

"I can't stop their natural instinct to go forward," he said, "but I can make them aware of their defensive responsibilities. So far it has worked out all right, but I certainly couldn't make any one of these two a sitting midfield player. That would be impossible, and also a crying shame."

While Skippy chips in with

“We go out to score goals and will certainly not be going out there to sit and hold back and play for the draw,” added McDonald. “That’s not like us, we are an attacking team, we are at home and the fans here will be urging us to go out and go forward and hopefully kill the tie.”

So, with soundbites like that, i think we can expect a night either of fraught tension, with Caldwell and Mick, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, flying into last ditch challenges as we are being stretched as we have 6 men up the field or goals galore as we blow the Muscovite's away.

With the Hearts manager, coach, chief bottle washer- what does he do?- highlighting the well known fact, hardly takes a coaching genius to notice, that Lee Naylor is oor weak link and that Spartak are quite handy in those wide areas with, for all you Corrie Street buffs a dead ringer for Kirk giving Nayls a torrid time in Moscow.

For that reason alone, Paul Hartley will come in and while he is not as defensively solid as you would like, see Newcastle pre-season, he is a better option than Aiden McGeady but what we we pay for an at peak Alan Thompson patrolling that wing this evening?

Mon The Hoops, Forza