Derek McInnes admitted his 10-man Hearts side “played with fire” and got burnt after their William Hill Premiership title hopes suffered a blow with a 1-0 defeat at St Mirren.
Craig Halkett was dismissed in the 29th minute for denying Saints debutant Jacob Devaney a goalscoring opportunity after an error from fellow centre-back Stuart Findlay put him in trouble.
It was the third time in five league games the Jambos had been reduced to 10 men. Unlike the previous two occasions, however, they were unable to grind out a result in Paisley as Miguel Freckleton’s 88th-minute header consigned them to a third defeat of the season.
The result leaves Hearts six points ahead of Celtic and Rangers, both of whom will have the chance to close the game when they play their games in hand on Wednesday.
“We’ve seen before in recent weeks about when we go down to 10 men, I think there’s a belief there that we can go and get results and I think that showed in the performance when we went down to 10 men,” said McInnes.
“But we’ve got to own the fact that we can’t keep getting away with it, you can’t keep playing with fire. It’s a red card, there’s no complaint about that, but we caused it, we got ourselves into a fankle.
“We had two opportunities to play it forward, and we get ourselves in a bit of a state, and it culminates in a last-gasp challenge, and we’ve paid for it.
“From that point on, it was just making sure we kept it at zero for as long as we can and then hope for a moment (at the other end).”
McInnes was proud of the way Hearts played after they went down to 10 men but frustrated to concede from a set-piece so late in the game.
“It was tough because we put so much into the game,” he said.
“After we went down to 10 men, I thought the lads were everything I expected them to be. We restricted St Mirren to very little.
“The irony is the ball was going for a goal kick, and we pushed it by for a corner. Then we’ve just got to win a header in the dying embers of the game, and we get our point, which it would be hard to deny we didn’t deserve based on the spirit and everything else.
“But ultimately we don’t pick up properly, we don’t attack the ball properly, and it’s in the back of the net, and we end up with nothing for our efforts.”
Saints ended a run of seven league games without a league victory and boss Stephen Robinson said: “I thought the energy levels were brilliant.
“We thoroughly deserved to win. Hearts are a very hard team to break down.
“We had a lot of opportunities that we should have taken but ultimately we got our reward for patience.”
