Hearts boss calls for 'mental toughness' as Craig Levein reacts to Hibs loss

Hearts boss Steven Naismith. Hearts boss Steven Naismith.
Hearts boss Steven Naismith. | Getty Images
Hearts and Hibs have both been in Scottish Premiership action this weekend

Hearts were beaten 2-0 away at Celtic on Saturday afternoon. They are winless in their first five games of the new season.

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Hibs won 2-0 at home to St Johnstone after goals by Mykola Kukharevych and Martin Boyle. Here is a look at some of the latest news regarding the Edinburgh pair and their league rivals...

Hearts boss believes fortunes will change

Hearts boss Steven Naismith is adamant that they will start to pick up wins. It has been a tough start to the campaign and they sit bottom of the table.

Speaking to Sky Sports after their defeat at Celtic, he said: “This is about the mental toughness of playing for Hearts. The start of the season has not been what we wanted. Today wasn’t going to define anything. There were positives from today, a lot of our out of possession stuff was really good. The work rate and organisation from the team was good.

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“We need more in the final third when we have possession. We need to be tryinig to put more teams under pressure. We worked on that over the international break so I expect over the next couple of weeks that we will see some of that. We will start picking up results.”

He added: “Without a shadow of a doubt we (need results). The start of the season has been disappointing but this next month we need to pick results up.”

St Johnstone manager on Hibs loss

St Johnstone manager Craig Levein is ‘confident’ he can turn results around. His side were beaten 2-0 by Hibs at Easter Road.

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The Saints have now lost four matches on the spin and are struggling for points. Levein has said, as per The Courier: “I’m confident. I think that the improvements in our players are quite apparent. It’s not like we’re getting hammered or people are having countless attacks or anything like that. Players have tried their best, I’ve got no doubt about that. I think a couple of things have gone against us.

“If we stick together and ignore the noise, then we’ll be fine. We’ll just try our best next week and hopefully make some better decisions and keep 11 people on the field. That would be nice.”

Celtic star eyed

Elsewhere in the Scottish Premiership, Celtic attacker Kyogo Furuhashi could emerge on the radar of Manchester City again this winter, according to Football Insider. The report claims the Japan international was wanted by the Premier League champions over the summer and may still link up with them in January.

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