Craig Gordon in brutally honest Hearts assessment as he tells Jambos the only way to stop outside noise

Hearts chief Andrew McKinlay might be avoiding the ‘r’ word.

But Craig Gordon has been round the block enough to know there’s no point hiding from the fact Hearts ARE in a relegation battle. Rock bottom and reeling from another rotten result in Sunday’s defeat to 10-man Kilmarnock, Gordon knows the prospect of taking the plunge if things don’t turn quickly is far from ridiculous.

When the topic of relegation raised it’s head in the wake of the club’s AGM a fortnight ago, McKinlay said he “wasn’t even using that word” and was “confident we will finish in the top six”. But Gordon was brutally honest as he met the media to preview tonight’s do-or-die Euro clash with Petrocub - an occasion the club captain knows is exactly the type of game that can reverse the slide.

A 100th tie in Europe for the Jambos and a place in the last 16 play offs if they win in front of a rammed Tynecastle could be the catalyst for a run to redemption. Something certainly needs to change which after gathering just 13 points from 17 Premiership games.

Asked if they were in a relegation battle, Gordon said: “We are because that’s where we are - there’s no getting away from that. We wouldn’t be in this position if we’d got the points on the board that we feel we should have done, but we haven’t.

“We can’t call it anything else. We need to start winning matches and until we get ourselves far enough away from that end of the table that it doesn’t become a possibility, then that is exactly what it is.

“We need to win football matches. Until we do, the noise is going to be there and people are going to be talking about it. If we don’t want people to talk about it then we know what we have to do.

“There’s always testing times during every player’s career,