Mixu warns Hibs to stop being reckless

MIXU PAATELAINEN today praised his central defensive pairing of Rob Jones and Sol Bamba – but admitted his backline will have to improve on their distribution.

The continued absence of Chris Hogg meant the Hibs boss was again forced to make changes to his line-up for the first Edinburgh derby of the SPL season.

With the Englishman still sidelined by problems with blurred vision and headaches, the Finn gave Jones and former Dunfermline defender Bamba the nod at the back with Ian Murray in midfield.

The Easter Road manager was delighted with their partnership and at the way they closed out Hearts' burly frontman Christian Nade.

However, he described some of his side's passing from defence as "reckless" and vowed to rectify that situation over the coming weeks.

Paatelainen said: "I thought that the central defensive partnership we had yesterday was fantastic. Christian Nade is a very big and powerful player who can cause a lot of problems to centre halves.

"I said after the game that some of our passing from defence can be better because I thought we looked a little bit reckless at times but you can't have everything and I felt that those two dealt very well will everything that Hearts threw at them.

"It was obviously a big blow for us to be without Hoggy but I thought that Rob and Sol did very well for us."

Paatelainen admitted that his overriding emotion at the end of the game was disappointment after passing up a number of chances to take all three points.

However, he insisted that there were still many positives to take from the game, including further signs of a growing understanding between his three strikers, Steven Fletcher, Derek Riordan and Colin Nish.

While the home side scored only one goal, their link-up play is clearly developing as the weeks go on.

Paatelainen said: "Having watched the footage of the game again, I felt that we should have won the game. They had a couple of chances as well but we created much more opportunities overall and I felt that we did enough to win.

"Yes, we are disappointed that we dropped two points but it is not because of the players' ability or because they didn't try.

"At the end of the day that's how football goes, you sometimes get games like that.

"You can never score too early in a game, I would much rather score in the first couple of minutes than not at all.

"I thought that the strikers did well for us and I don't think that anyone can look at our side and say those three boys will not score goals this season.

"I was pleased with every one of them and, although we only scored the one goal, I thought that we really caused them problems."

However, with Celtic next up at Parkhead, Paatelainen stressed that he won't be taking such an offensive approach every week and will choose his formation based on who the opposition are: "I knew before the game that our midfield would be outnumbered but unfortunately you can only field 11 players and if you want to play three up front then you can only have three in midfield.

"We took a calculated risk and I thought that the players we put in there did well.

"I'm not saying that I will play three up front every week, I will simply take it week by week and look at our opposition individually.

"Next weekend we have a very difficult game against Celtic at Parkhead, so we will look at it again for that game."