Lawrence Shankland has pointed to Fiorentina's heavy Serie A loss against Lazio as proof they can lose goals as Hearts look to cause an upset in Italy.
Robbie Neilson's side have arrived in Florence ahead of their Europa Conference League return as matchday four takes centre stage. The hosts ran out 3-0 winners at Tynecastle last week to get their first win in the group section. It only took them four minutes to strike in the capital with the Jambos star calling on his team-mates to start the game much better.
Hearts have done their homework on Fiorentina ahead of what will be a difficult task but Shankland believes they can get some joy if they attack their opponents in the right ways. The capital club have three points from three games with a win picked up in Riga over RFS and defeats in the other two group outings to date.
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Only one point splits Fiorentina in second and Hearts in third in the section going into this one with a huge 90 minutes to come in Florence.
Speaking in his pre-match media conference, Shankland said: “I don’t think we showed them too much respect. Obviously, they’re a very good team and they played really well when they came to Tynecastle last week.
“As the gaffer said: I don’t think we executed our game plan as well as we could have. Tomorrow night is a fresh game for us Hopefully we can start the game better. They suffered a heavy defeat on Monday night, which is proof they can lose goals.
“If you attack them in the right ways, you can get at them. We’ve done our analysis on them to see what we can try and do so hopefully it all comes together.”
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