Gary Mackay: Oliver Bozanic should be an automatic pick in Hearts' midfield

Hearts midfielder Oliver Bozanic tackles Rangers captain James Tavernier at Tynecastle on Sunday

When I was playing, I had people like Neil Berry, Kenny Black and Walter Kidd in the team alongside me. These are guys who were good team-mates. For me, that’s exactly what Bozanic is. That’s what he shows any time he is in the team.

He never hides and that is the kind of player you need at Livingston this Saturday and St Johnstone next Wednesday. I would have him in the team for sure. I think he allows Glenn Whelan and Sean Clare to do their thing because he gives them great support. Hopefully we get to see that continuing.

Goodness knows why he has not been in the starting line-up of late but sometimes you need to be part of a team performance like Sunday’s against Rangers to lay a marker down. He definitely did that in my opinion.

Sunday’s 1-1 draw was a lot better for the mindset of the Hearts supporters. For the players, what was probably an easy formation to set out made it so much better. There wasn’t anything complicated about it.

Hearts just went and got at Rangers from the first minute of the game and could have been more than one goal ahead. They showed they were as good as the opposition on the day.

You would hope the players take belief from it because I thought they responded to that fairly easy system. It was like a 4-4-1-1 formation and they knew exactly what was expected of them. There was nothing complicated in it.

We got a lot of joy from it and caused Rangers plenty problems. I felt Uche Ikpeazu played the lone striker role as well as he possibly could for more than an hour. He was excellent in the first 30 minutes especially and Rangers didn’t know how to handle him. He needed that pick-me-up and his team-mates also needed it.

What the players must do now, to an extent, is self-motivate. The motivation was there on Sunday and we all saw that. It was great to see. There wasn’t any expectancy against Rangers because of the quality they have, but there will be expectation when we go to Livingston and St Johnstone.

That means it’s down to players motivating themselves and each other. They will need to get the crowd up and boost them, even if that’s a travelling support in West Lothian or Perth. It’s a very different challenge to playing against Rangers at Tynecastle in a really intense atmosphere.

Turning it on against Rangers, Celtic, Hibs or Aberdeen is a given for anybody. Places like Livingston and St Johnstone are where you earn your corn. This is where you earn the opportunity to maybe play in Europe next season, so these next two games are massive in that sense.