Steven Naismith gives Hearts their flowers after 'really brave' decision vs Celtic

Hearts failed to solve the Celtic Park ‘conundrum’ as they fell to a 3-0 defeat against the Premiership title favourites on Saturday afternoon.

That was the verdict of former Hearts head coach Steven Naismith as he assessed a ‘brave’ game-plan from his successor Neil Critchley and identified the one player that caused major problems during the defeat. There were visible signs of an aggressive setup from Critchley as his players produced an intense opening quarter of an hour and pressed their hosts high up the pitch.

However, Hoops star Callum McGregor began to influence proceedings and that led to the Hoops taking a three-goal lead by the time the half-time whistle was blown thanks to a Daizen Maeda brace and a Jota goal. That all but killed off Hearts’ hopes of securing any reward from the game - but Naismith still felt his old club had good reason to take a brave approach to the game, despite being unpicked by a midfielder he feels has been the best in Scotland ‘for the last five or six seasons’.

He told Sportscene: “It’s the conundrum going to Celtic Park. You either be aggressive and push and the downside of that is you are vulnerable. Or you be compact and try and push the game further down and hopefully take your chances. The manager came out and said that was the game-plan and I think that’s really brave. It’s really brave playing with three forwards, it was good.

He continued: “The best midfielder in Scotland for the last five or six seasons has been Callum McGregor. People see him as a six and he sits and dictates the game. But his intelligence, and we spoke about this upstairs, that’s what was lacking in the Old Firm. He takes himself into positions that causes Shankland a problem and it develops from there. That’s how it played out today.”

‘You try to come up with something’

Former Motherwell and Ross County manager Stuart Kettlewell also pointed to an ‘aggressive’ approach from Hearts in the early stages and stressed their defeat came thanks to ‘tweaks and alterations’ made in the Celtic midfield.

Hearts head coach Neil Critchley (L) and Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers | SNS Group

He said: “It was interesting and I think Celtic’s quality showed through in the end, it was a deserved win - but Hearts came with a game-plan to try and be aggressive and meet Celtic high up the pitch. It was relatively successful in the first 15 minutes of the game but what Celtic are good at, and have been for many years now, is solving those problems. You try to come up with something, you hear Neil Critchley saying that, the first two opportunities they had, they punished them, that’s who they do. We found it interesting with the tweaks and alterations Celtic made in midfield just to solve a couple of problems they didn’t against Rangers.”

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