Steven Naismith reckons the future is bright at Hearts after watching his kids rack up the goals to recover from a sticky start to the season.
B-team boss Naismith is overseeing their debut season in the Lowland League and after hovering around the lower reaches during the early stages, they are starting to climb the standings. The young Jambos returned from a break to thwart Dalbeattie Star 4-0 on Saturday - after thumping nine past Edinburgh Uni and edging out Gretna 2-1 at the start of November.
They're up to 13th now and former Kilmarnock, Rangers and Hearts forward Naismith reckons the future is starting to look very bright indeed. He said, via the Edinburgh Evening News : “I feel as a group we have learned and in the last three performances you can see we are progressing. We have won them all, but they have been different kind of wins. Against Gretna we had to really defend our lead, but the other games we have played some very good attacking football.
“We have come up against a couple of teams who sit in which can be difficult, but we’ve had the solutions in terms of players positioning and timing of runs, but we’ve been clinical in the final third. That is all very pleasing. This isn’t just a big step up for everybody, it’s some of the boys’ first year in full time football and it’s the first year out of academy football for others, so you’re dealing with lots of scenarios with a lot of very young players.
“It was a run of fixtures where we felt we were playing against sides at the bottom end of the table in games you want to be putting on a show. I think for most of the season there hasn’t been many games where I have not been happy with the effort or the work rate. In the first quarter of the season, we lost a lot of games on individual errors.
"So, when we came into this run of fixtures we were hoping the players had progressed, which they have, and we made the right choices in games which allows us to get the points. Out of possession, no matter who you play, you need to be hard to beat as a group."
