What John Robertson had to say as Hearts defeated Inverness 2-1

Inverness manager John Robertson hailed his young players for causing Hearts problems as the Jambos edged out the Highlanders 2-1 in the Championship.

Inverness boss John Robertson, right, chats to Hearts coaches Lee McCulloch and Gordon Forrest.

Second-half goals from Steven Naismith and Liam Boyce appeared to have the hosts on easy street at Tynecastle, but Aaron Doran halved the arrears with four minutes to go to set up a nervy finish.

Inverness ultimately could not find an equaliser, but Robertson was pleased with his team’s performance.

“I thought in the first half our youngsters matched Hearts,” said Robertson. “We knew from the previous game in the cup that we would have the energy to match Hearts and we've done that again.I thought we got about them really well and restricted Hearts to a couple of half-chances in the first half. We weren't enough of a threat ourselves, that's what we said to the players at half time. We got from half-way from our half to half-way in their half pretty well, but when we needed that little bit of quality, that extra ingredient in the last third, we didn't work Craig Gordon a lot.

"We've got young players and they'll learn. Second goal was a helluva finish as Wallace Duffy has got himself in a good defensive position to stop Boyce getting to the near post, but he's produced a bit of magic. We stuck at it and we managed to get our experienced boys on, who can only give us 15, 20 minutes right now because they've not trained until the beginning of the week. We started to cause them problems, we get the goal and suddenly Hearts are hanging on."

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