Zander Clark has heaped praise on his Hearts defensive team-mates after victory under the lights at Tynecastle.
Barrie McKay scored what proved to be the winning goal after 30 minutes to increase the gap between the Jambos and the chasing pack in the hunt to finish best of the rest behind Celtic and Rangers to six points. The former St Johnstone No1 - who has taken over the gloves in the capital with skipper Craig Gordon out injured long-term - admitted the victory 'wasn't pretty' but Robbie Neilson's men dug in and got all three points.
Delivering his assessment on the Tynecastle win over the Buddies and the performance of his team-mates, he told Hearts' official website: “It wasn’t pretty, but we dug deep when we had to. It was a lovely goal from Barrie to get us on the way. We dominated the game for a bit and then they came into it second half and put us under a bit of pressure, but I thought as a defensive unit we dealt with everything they threw at us.
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“It is important to try win the home games. We knew after last weekend that it was going to be a difficult game. They have a good home record, but so do we.
"So, tonight it was up to us to take the game to them and impose ourselves on the game, which I thought we did for large spells.
“As a goalkeeper, you always want to go into games and keep a clean sheet. If you can do that without making saves, then brilliant, but when you are called upon, and you make saves that help the team out, then that is very pleasing.
“That is not just down to me though, it’s about the back five as a whole. They were all excellent. Toby and Kye and then big James coming in having only trained with us a couple of times, to come in and put in a performance like that was excellent.”
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