Source: FOOTYMAD
Jefferies Going Fishing For A Win In Hungary
While Paksi may be small fry, Hearts still have to make sure they do the business in the away leg Hearts take on Paksi tonight in the first leg of the third qualifying round of the Europa League tonight and Jim Jefferies insists there is no chance he will be taking the Hungarian minnows lightly. Paksi only reached their domestic top flight for the first time five years ago. However, they have fought above their weight in their European debut, beating Andorrans UE Santa Coloma before stunning Tromso with a 3-0 win in Norway to set up the tie with the Edinburgh side. Hearts head into the first leg brimming with confidence following a well-deserved 1-1 draw at Ibrox in the SPL curtain-raiser on Saturday but Jefferies is not getting carried away. He said: "We'll be stressing that this won't be easy. But, if we play as well as we can, we're more than capable of winning here. I've seen them twice and I've got a lot of information on them. Our goalkeeper Janos Balogh has been a big help because he knows quite a few of their players and he is friendly with their captain, who is suspended for this game. But they are a small club, they've done fantastically well to get into Europe for the first time. And that was a tremendous result to beat Tromso, who were 14 games into their season and lying second in the Norwegian league. They had to play on an artificial pitch over there and it looked as if it took the first 45 minutes to get used to it.'' Jefferies' side are also unlikely to be intimidated in Hungary after a crowd of under 2,000 watched Paksi's home leg against Tromso. Hearts' last foray into Europe under Csaba Laszlo two years ago against Dinamo Zagreb saw them suffer an irreparable 4-0 first-leg defeat in Croatia, but Jefferies is eyeing a positive result at the Sostoi stadium. He said: "We've got to do this over two legs and it would be nice if we could go into the second game having scored because remember this is a team who went to Tromso and won 3-0. We have to leave here with the tie very much in our hands.'' Hearts have finally welcomed midfielder David Obua after the Ugandan midfielder was delayed almost seven hours at the airport because of visa problems. Obua's problems started when he had to travel to London on Tuesday after realising his passport had expired.
