Blair Spittal shares how he's dealing with 'tough' Hearts situation as he takes added dressing room role

He’s found Hearts starts and minutes hard to come by - but Blair Spittal insists he’ll be ready to go whenever Derek McInnes needs him.

The midfielder was a last-gasp addition to the starting XI in Saturday’s 1-0 Premiership win over Falkirk after Ageu picked up an injury in the warm-up. Spittal was an unused sub in eight of the last 10 matches prior to the weekend victory, playing four minutes in the draw with Celtic in January, and for 68 minutes after Hearts were reduced to 10 men in defeat at St Mirren earlier this month.

Again he was thrown into the mix when disruption hit boss McInnes’ plans and the 30-year-old played 90 minutes, impressing with his technical quality and battling in an injury-hit midfield. It’s not been easy amid a lack of selection, playing 14 league matches this term, but Spittal insists he’s happy to play his part for the league leaders amid a quest for title glory.

Blair Spittal on his role at Hearts

“About seven minutes to three to be honest,” said Spittal on when he found out on when he was playing. “It's one of those unfortunate things that happens in the warm up sometimes, when the boys get injured and you just need to make sure when you're not starting you need to prepare as if something's going to happen. Thankfully, from a personal point of view it was nice to come into the team, but at the end of the day it's not nice to see Ageu get the injury that he's got.

“I was still out warming up, I was just getting ready to hit a few shots and Paul Sheerin (assistant coach) came up to me and told me to make sure I was ready. Just at that moment, just make sure your head was switched on in the game. We knew it was going to be a tough game today, but at points we made it hard for ourselves, but I thought it was a great few points at the end of the day.

“It's been tough. I'm not going to lie, but it's just important that you make sure you're training well and wait for your opportunity. At times I've played well, not brilliant, but when I've come into the team I've played well. I know there's a lot of boys and it's a really competitive squad, but a lot of boys are having great seasons this year. The competition's there, so like I said, you just need to make sure you're ready for when the opportunity comes.”

It’s a result that keeps Hearts top heading into the weekend clash with Aberdeen. McInnes’ message to Spittal as he entered play was simple and the creative-minded player knows how big a period is coming up for Hearts.

What was Derek McInnes’ message to Blair Spittal?

“Just come in and do what I do in training every day,” Spittal said. “Show a bit of composure. Obviously at times the game was a wee bit open and stretched, probably more than what we would have wanted, especially in the first half. I thought second half we got to grips with it, I thought we played a bit better, not brilliant, but we played a lot better than what we did in the first half and were kind of unlucky not to get a couple of goals. Obviously, like I said, we know that Falkirk are a good team, they want to control the ball, so it was important in the midfield that we got to grips with that and try to stop their players that want to dominate the game doing that. We’ve got a massive period coming up before the split, so we need to make sure that we win as many games as possible.”

Islam Chesnokov scored the winner on Saturday, his first since arriving at the club in the winter transfer window. Jordi Altena, Rogers Mato and Marc Leonard also arrived in Gorgie and Spittal is keen to step up and help those stars settle into the pressure cooker of a title race.

“I think it'll do a lot,” added Spittal on the goal for Chesnokov. “It's been a bit of a stop-start for him in terms of coming in when his season stopped, but getting up to speed with it in the Scottish game is not easy to come in and hit the ground running. But with each passing week in training, you can see the quality he's got. I thought he took his goal really well. Obviously it's the way it's brought to him, and he's managed to get the wee toe poke into the bottom corner. So it was a good time for us to score. I think you could probably sense that in the stadium. I thought in parts in the first half we were actually OK, but a few times we were far too open. Falkirk, thankfully, never capitalised on that.

”The goal came at a good time for us, for sure. I think that's the job of the boys that have been here. The likes of Craig Halkett, Frankie Kent, Cammy Devlin, Lawrence Shankland. A lot of the boys that know a lot about Scottish football, we need to make it as easy and comfortable for them as possible. Coming into this environment, like I said, it's not the easiest place to come into, but with each past meeting you can see the quality of these players that are coming in. It's important that the role that we play, that we make sure we keep on top of them.”