Hearts manager Paulo Sergio praised Scottish Cup minnows Auchinleck Talbot for their battling display at Tynecastle but admitted he always felt his side would win.

The Gorgie side left it late to beat the Ayrshire side, with Gordon Smith scoring in the 84th minute in the 1-0 win.

The hosts had missed a penalty and survived a late scare when the junior team had an injury-time goal ruled out for offside.

However the Portuguese boss says he wasn’t worried that he would suffer a cup upset.

He said : "It was a typical cup game. When you play against a smaller team, if you score early in the match you can build a big result.

"When you don't do it, the other team starts believing. Sometimes that puts you in trouble.

"I have to congratulate our opponent. They came here and made things hard for us.

"It was 90 minutes of Hearts trying to score. I'm always positive and I expected the goal to come before in the situations we had."

Hearts debutant Fraser Mullen saw a penalty saved while Talbot keeper Andrew Leishman saved well from Rudi Skacel and David Templeton.

Sergio had no complaints over Mullen’s decision to take the spot-kick.

"For me he's the man of the match," Sergio added. "I didn't say to him to take the penalty - I was screaming to Scott Robinson.

"But I liked the guts, the courage, that a kid picked the ball up and said `I'll take the penalty'.

"It's not because he missed a penalty that has influence in my analysis of his performance, because I think he did a great job. He played like a 35-year-old man.

"I believe in them. Some of them did a great job, others didn't do so well, but I still believe in them."

Gordon Pope thought he had netted an equaliser only for the strike to be ruled out for offside.

Auchinleck Talbot boss Tommy Sloan had no complaints.

Sloan said: "It's hard to say from where we were. He thought he was on (side), he thought he moved at the right time, but he would, wouldn't he?"

Sloan also praised Leishman, even though he was part of the mix-up which led to Hearts' goal, crashing into team-mate Bryan Slavin to allow Smith to drive into an empty net.

"He's had five or six saves and then he came for one and two committed players went for the ball," Sloan added.

"It's a bit disappointing from that point of view but there's certainly no blaming Andrew or anybody else.

"I'm delighted. It's no surprise about this group of players. They were all excellent."

IN DETAIL

• Match report: Hearts 1-0 Auchinleck Talbot