Hearts answer 'soft' and 'weak' accusations - and hope to have three players back this weekend

Saturday’s win at St Mirren carried huge importance for Riccarton management

Hearts management attached real significance to Saturday’s 2-1 win at St Mirren because they felt it answered many criticisms levelled at their team. Jorge Grant’s penalty and a Mikael Mandron own goal gave the visitors a hard-earned victory in Paisley as they battled tenaciously for three points.

Head coach Steven Naismith pointed to his side’s aggression and appetite for the fight as key factors in the result. With Storm Kathleen taking hold in Scotland, blustery winds made free-flowing football difficult. Naismith told the Edinburgh News that Hearts showed another side to their game to dig out a win.

“For me, it’s the biggest thing. That’s the first thing I said to the players after the game,” he explained. “It’s been questioned over the last two or three years: ‘Hearts are a soft team, Hearts aren’t up for the fight, they’re weak, they concede too many set-plays.’ That was the foundation of our win on Saturday.

“You could see the conditions with the ball being impacted by the wind every time it was in the air. There is more emphasis on that because of the uncertainty of where the ball is going to bounce. You need to be ready to react. I thought we did that really well.

“St Mirren are a team who want to put balls in your box. The get it wide and put it in the box and we had to deal with that. On a whole, I was really impressed with how we stood up to it. We don’t get 10 away wins in a season without that element of the game because every team fancies their chances at home.”

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The St Mirren side also had a considerable height advantage over their Edinburgh counterparts. “The last two weeks have been the same. Kilmarnock were massive compared to us last week,” said Naismith. “We have worked really hard, especially on our defensive set-plays. We looked at where we need to be, what you need to do if you are a smaller player. The last two games have been brilliant.

“People might see attackers getting headers in the box and think: ‘Oh, you’ve lost your man.’ Sometimes it’s impossible to stop them getting contact. It’s about how good a chance you give them. All season we have been really good at dealing with that.”

The win kept Hearts 11 points clear in third place in the Premiership, whilst St Mirren are also guaranteed top-six football after the split. Hearts Hearts now host Livingston at Tynecastle on Saturday in their final pre-split fixture. Coaching staff are hoping top goalscorer Lawrence Shankland and midfielder Beni Baningime will be available for that match after illness. Fellow midfielder Calem Nieuwenhof is also close to returning after a hamstring injury.

“Hopefully Calem, Beni and Shanks will be back. Who knows?” said Naismith. “We were missing three of our most consistent players of the season on Saturday and won the game. That’s brilliant. That tells me that we have a togetherness and a hunger for individuals to see the opportunity they are going to get. If it comes, they need to take it. I think they did that.

“We now have a home game against Livingston to finish the games before the split. We will go into it confident and consistency is key, so these are the wins we need to get.”