Wouter Vrancken hailed his buoyant Heart of Midlothian side for digging deep to maintain the post-derby feel-good factor as they defeated depleted Dundee 2-1 with a dramatic late fightback at Tynecastle.
The Jambos made it four William Hill Premiership victories in a row and eight unbeaten in all competitions after eventually overturning Bradley Fink’s 17th-minute opener for the Dark Blues.
The equaliser came in the 84th minute through a Claudio Braga penalty after Owen Bevan was penalised for handball, before Dundee had Zan Besir sent off as the match ticked into stoppage time.
Substitute Sabah Kerjota then popped up with the winner in the sixth minute of added time to send Hearts up to second in the table just a few days after the euphoria of their 3-1 triumph against city rivals Hibernian.
“If you win a derby and you then lose this weekend, you bring the focus on the negative; you lose the emotion of the derby a bit,” said Vrancken, who admitted his side were poor in the first half against Dundee.
“So after a setback in a difficult game and against a side who defended really low, I was really happy to see that we stayed in the game and we kept pushing to get what we deserved, and at the end they did it.
“It’s also good to see that the players don’t panic and that they have the resilience and quality to turn those situations around because you have to have it when you want to try to fight for the top spots in the league.”
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Vrancken, who admitted his side missed injured midfielder Blair Spittal, praised Kerjota after the winger notched his first goal since arriving last summer. “Sabah was a possibility to start,” he said. “But I’m happy that we could bring him on and create this extra spark because that’s why you need subs.”
Dundee boss Steven Pressley lamented a difficult day for his team as they lost three players to injury – Joe Westley, Ryan Finnigan and Fin Robertson – before Zan Besir was sent off at the start of seven minutes of added time.
“It was a challenging afternoon, yet we nearly got a really positive outcome,” he said. “It was a really difficult game to manage in the respect that we had so many enforced changes.
“There were so many things to deal with. When I consider all the challenges that I had, and the players were faced with on the pitch, I thought they were incredible in their attitude and performance.
“Not in terms of controlling the game or having periods of possession, but just the will and desire and determination to try and get a result.”
Offering a prognosis on the three injuries, Pressley said: “We’re obviously concerned with Joe; we think it could be a fractured cheekbone.
“Fin Robertson, the outside of his knee, a bit of concern around that, and Ryan Finnigan was an ankle injury; he’ll go for an MRI, but it’s still too early to have a clear diagnosis on that.”
