What Hearts' big win means to club as Beni Baningime injury update issued

The Jambos got their first competitive win of the season in Azerbaijan against the Belarussian champions when substitute Yan Dhanda headed home from close range in the last minute of stoppage time. The Jambos had to battle back from going a goal down in Sumgayit after Stephen Alfred opened the scoring on 21 minutes, only for a Sergey Politevich own goal to level matters on 37 minutes. Dhanda's winner was the second late goal in the space of five days to earn Hearts a positive result after Saturday's 1-1 draw with Ross County.

Hearts now fly directly back to Aberdeen to prepare for Sunday's Premiership match away at Pittodrie against the high-flying Dons. The managerless Jambos, whose chief executive Andrew McKinlay has admitted the next head coach is likely to not be Scottish, are bottom of the league on two points. Fox hopes his players take confidence from the win more than 3000 miles away from Edinburgh.

"The players worked so hard, so hard," said Fox. "They played really, really well. I thought we had moments where we had wee bits of flashes of quality, but they hung in. Everybody kept going to the very end and that's twice now we've scored two late goals, which is a credit to the players.

"I'm thrilled for the players, but the only disappointment was that we didn't have support here tonight. So I'm hoping that in the pubs and the houses back home, we've got them off their couches. If you're going to win a game, that's the way to win a game. Overall, at the moment, just pure joy for the supporters and the players.

"We know we can play better tonight, I understand that. We're not going to get away from that. We're always looking for things to be perfect but I think tonight was hopefully another step of the step that we made on Saturday. Yeah, I think the sooner you get that when you're in a wee bit of a poor run of form, as soon as you get that, we spoke about confidence and not being able to switch it on and off. I feel that they got confidence from continuing to keep going on Saturday and getting a late goal. Then tonight we kept going and we still had that belief that we could get the winner tonight.

"So we're hoping that gives us more confidence, it frees us up a wee bit more. We can still pass the ball better, I'm fully aware of that, but you've got to give respect to the opponent. We're playing in the Conference League, we're playing in a stadium where the pitch isn't great, we're playing with no supporters. So all these challenges, we've managed to overcome that and that is purely all down to the players.

Fox also gave an injury update on midfielder Beni Baningime, who limped off towards the closing stages of the match. "I think it was just fatigue," added Fox. "Beni has been injured for a period of time before I came in and he just got back on the team. I thought he was good again tonight. I thought [young right-back] Adam Forrester was really good again tonight. If I'm being honest with you, I don't really want to single anybody out. I thought they all gave absolutely everything. And sometimes that can carry you."