Hearts Secure Win Despite Losing Captain

Hearts head coach Robbie Neilson admits practising with 10 men paid off as his side beat Ross County 2-0 courtesy of goals from Callum Paterson and Osman Sow.

Already leading through Paterson's 15th minute strike, Hearts captain Blazej Augustyn was sent off three minutes after the restart for pulling down County forward Liam Boyce.

After weathering the storm, the hosts added a second through Sow in the 67th minute to move within two points of second place Aberdeen in the Premiership.

Neilson got into trouble with the Scottish FA after August's defeat to Hamilton, when Paterson was sent off by Willie Collum.

The Hearts boss said afterwards that his players had trained with 10 men due to the referee's penchant for handing out red cards - but he is unlikely to face any action this time after seeing his side hold on to claim back-to-back victories.

Neilson said: I thought we were pretty comfortable, even when we went down to 10 men.

I have said before, and it got me into trouble, but we do practice with 10 men in training.

We were very disciplined, kept it tight and were able to hit them on the counter-attack.

I thought the whole team worked hard and it was a really good team performance to get the three points.''

Hearts are now only three points adrift of leaders Celtic, who face Dundee United on Sunday, but Neilson admits there is little chance of his team being able to maintain a challenge at the summit.

Neilson, whose side host Celtic in the League Cup on Wednesday, added: It has swung a fair bit in the last few weeks.

We won five-in-a-row at the start of the season and were challenging, and then lost three and were worrying about the top six.

We are far, far away from Celtic. They are a team full of international footballers and experienced at winning titles.

We are a team who have just been promoted. Yes, we have had a great start but the aim at the start of the season was top six. That's still the aim.

We are not going to get carried away with back to back wins as we have just gone a period without getting a result and that will happen again during the season.''

Hearts got off to a great start when Paterson drilled a fantastic 20-yard strike into the net.

Despite being a man down, striker Sow bundled home a second in the 67th minute after collecting Jamie Walker's pass.

County manager Jim McIntyre said: It was very disappointing. We have been getting a lot of plaudits lately and rightly so - but we were well off it.

It wasn't just one or two. We lost far too many individual battles first half and handed the initiative to Hearts.

If you don't win enough of them, they win in the key areas and they have dangerous players.''