Lawrence Shankland believes Hearts can still land third spot in what has been an 'up and down' campaign.
The Jambos currently trail Aberdeen in the best of the rest spot by five points with just four Premiership fixtures to go. The team finishing behind Celtic and Rangers will land a spot in the Europa League play-off round with the added incentive of Europa Conference League group stage football if they fall out of the second tier competition - if the Hoops complete the Treble and lift the Scottish Cup against Scottish Championship outfit Inverness.
Hearts' next two games come against St Mirren and Aberdeen with interim boss Steven Naismith labelling the upcoming fixtures as the most important of the season. Under Robbie Neilson pre-World Cup the capital club were at one point eight points adrift so skipper Shankland knows the recovery in the final run-in is possible.
READ MORE: Alex Cochrane Hearts red card vs Celtic put under Ref Watch microscope by Dermot Gallagher
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He does admit losing out would feel like a chance missed but the capital club remain hopeful they can secure that third place for the second season running. He said: "Probably, aye. Because of the situation we were in.”
But he countered: “What I will say is that before the World Cup we were eight points behind. It has been kind of up and down.
“When we have finished all the fixtures, if we have not finished third, then we have not been good enough for the full season.
“It will not come down to a certain point or a certain game. We will look at the whole season. We are still hopeful, we believe in what we are doing and obviously we have got important games coming up.
“Listen, we had a wee bad run and it cost us our position there. So that is all it takes. It can happen quite quickly.
“Our performances have been decent in the last couple of games. We can build on that, take confidence, just look to get points on the board and see where we end up. We just need to concentrate on our performances and trying to get wins.
“All the games after the split are huge. Aberdeen are obviously above us. We need to go and pick up as many points as we can in the next four games, not just the next two. We will see where we end up.”
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