Hearts manager Robbie Neilson urged his players to have more trust in their ability after an encouraging but ultimately frustrating night at Celtic Park.
Neilson was adamant that Kyogo Furuhashi’s winning goal in the 1-0 defeat for Hearts was clearly offside, but he was also proud of his side’s performance, especially in the second half when they created several good opportunities.
The former Hearts defender claimed his team would have to play “doubly well” at Celtic Park to get points given his frustration with the officials.
But he also knew they would need to take their chances and show greater belief to play the way they did in the second half from the start.
Neilson told Hearts TV: “We need to have that belief and do it from the start. I spoke to the players about that – trust yourself and trust each other. Especially when you come to places like Celtic Park and there is a lot of pressure and 60,000 here and it’s 100 miles an hour. Trust yourself to pass the ball.
“We work on it all the time in training and we do it in games, but we have to do it consistently and do it consistently in places like Celtic Park.
“That’s the disappointing thing, you get a bad decision against you, you lose the goal, you lose the game and everybody just laughs if off, says you need to move on to the next game, it evens itself out over the course of the season. It doesn’t when you come to places like this.
“Can you change it? Probably not to be honest with you. But what you can do is come and fight harder and dominate games and score goals, and that’s what we need to get to.”
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