Naismith: Halkett and Gordon already making their presences felt

Neither Gordon nor Halkett has featured for the first team since a league encounter with Dundee United on Christmas Eve last year, but both are edging close to a return after resuming training.

Gordon was between the sticks for Hearts B in their 3-1 win over Rangers’ colts side at Auchenhowie yesterday and although Naismith is wary of putting an exact timeframe on their respective recoveries, the Hearts head coach is already seeing the benefit of having the experienced duo back on the training pitch at Oriam to share their expertise.

“I would not want to put an exact date on it but Craig and Halkett are now at the stage of just building up,” Naismith explained. “It’s a period of two, three, four weeks that they are consistently training and getting minutes. Then we’ll look at, ‘right they’ve got through that’, we can say they are potentially ready to be involved in a squad.

READ MORE: Naismith provides injury updates on Gordon, Halkett, Tagawa and Kingsley

“There are so many variations within that, especially for the goalie, games are probably much more important than training for Craig because, ‘how is he going to be with a cross ball coming in, or diving out at someone’s feet?’. Whereas in training there is caution there.

“That’s that and Craig Halkett has come into the group and looked really good but again players when they’ve been out for a long time, they start off with a real high then it’s adapting after that. Those two are still a bit away.

“The two of them being back on the training pitch, you can feel it, you can hear it when you’re doing training. The voices that are there, it’s just instructions. At the minimum you are passing on instructions and then the other part of it is they are setting standards so that definitely does make a difference and it helps.”

A trip to Ibrox awaits on Sunday and Naismith knows his side will need to hit greater heights than they did in last weekend’s chastening 4-1 loss at home to Celtic. The manner of the defeat is what truly stung the Hearts head coach, but he is hopeful that his players use the fixture against Rangers as an opportunity to learn from their mistakes against the champions.

“Definitely,” he said. “I think that has been the process this season at times, in games we’ve lost sloppy goals we’ve gone on and built a decent run of performances, taking away results. In the past it has shown we have learned our lesson but this will be a big test as for me that was our most disappointing performance.

“We’ve looked over the goals and I think the biggest aspect is that we need to be much tighter defensively, we can’t give up opportunities like that. Last week’s game and this week’s game are similar in that you’ll be punished more times than you’re not in those situations.

“Last week’s game was different to maybe the previous three games in that we were not good in possession, poor out of possession and that cost us against the best team in the league. If we tidy up on our general play, that will give us a better opportunity.”

This will be Naismith’s first trip to Ibrox as Hearts’ fully-fledged head coach – the former Scotland internationalist oversaw a 2-2 draw in Govan last season during his interim spell – and there will be a new face in the home dugout, too, after Phillipe Clement was hired as Michael Beale’s replacement earlier this month.

READ MORE: The key changes that show how Hearts' first-team regulars are evolving

With Rangers only having played two fixtures under their new manager, there is a degree of uncertainty over how the Glasgow side will set up tactically on Sunday afternoon. Naismith, though, doesn’t expect there to be too many sweeping changes.

“They had the game last week at home, which helps as you imagine they will be pretty similar. They’ve got the game tonight and we’ll see what we can take from that,” said Naismith, speaking ahead of Rangers’ Europa League meeting with Sparta Prague last night.

“But just like we don’t know much about them it’s a short period of time for the manager to be in. As he’s said, he’s not going to change every part of the team or the structure of what they’re doing. We’ve watched them and have an understanding of what we want to do.

“In general, we need to defend better than what we did last week, especially against better teams that when we’ve got the ball, we’re in control, we decide what is happening. It’s not rushed and we're not just kicking it out the park and deciding we’re going to defend for 90 minutes - because you are setting yourself up for failure.”

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