Cammy Devlin vows to repay Hearts fans as he channels positives from Falkirk nightmare into Plzen showdown
Hearts have taken a battering after the Bairns. Now Cammy Devlin wants to make sure that the Jambos come off the pitch with faith restored and they are back to being the main men in Plzen, writes Scott Burns in the Czech Republic.
The Gorgie side take on Viktoria Plzen in the first left leg of their clash in the Doosan Arena on Thursday evening. Hearts are looking to get to winning ways after their shock Premier Sports Cup exit to Falkirk at the weekend. Devlin knows you have worked too hard just to let their European assault be overshadowed by what happened at the weekend. The Australian said: “Yeah, we obviously watched, you watch back the game, don't you?
“Because it's disappointing and you want to see what you did wrong and turn that into positives. That's the same as every game. But that's in the past. We've got a massive European game that we've put ourselves in a position last year to be here today. So we don't want to be thinking about what's happened the other day. You want to be really excited.
“We've got a massive support coming over from Edinburgh and Scotland and that's something we just want to repay them in terms of the effort they've made to come in. You know, I think that the work we put in last year has put us in this position for tomorrow.”
Hearts are looking to qualify for the Europa League group stages for the first time, although the losers know they have the fallback of dropping into the Europa Conference League. Naismith led Hearts to third place last season and their reward for that is an extended Europe run, which they hope will be in the second best club competition. It is all eyes on the Europa League.
Devlin admitted: “We're really fortunate in terms of how hard we worked last year and how we