Cammy Devlin cut a frustrated figure in the sun at the side of the pitch at Highbury on Saturday afternoon. The Heart of Midlothian midfielder had spent 90 minutes bombing about in the heat but he, like his team-mates, knew the performance in the team's final pre-season friendly fell below the required standards.

"It's obviously not ideal," was the first reaction to the 3-0 loss to Fleetwood Town. 

Hearts had a game plan for the fixture. Something to work on ahead of the new season. It didn't work. Steven Naismith admitted as much post-match.

Devlin explained it was "about being good on the ball and breaking a team down".

"The goals we conceded were really soft," he said. "The gaffer said in the dressing room after that we are fortunate that the only positive that we can take from it is that it hasn’t cost us three points. We need to use it as a warning to raise the standards because there is no shadowing over the fact that it wasn’t good enough.

"As someone who was on the pitch the whole time, it obviously wasn’t good enough. The only thing you can do is move on and look forward. That’s hard right now to be honest because everyone is devastated and shattered in there.

"The only thing is that we are at home next week against Rangers and it is actually worth three points. It is the first game of the season after a really successful year last year and we just have to look forward to that."

Devlin may have been the wrong person to ask about the energy levels and why, as Naismith said about the result, it came down to "energy and application". The Australian midfielder possesses those energy levels in abundance.

He may not have had the answer but equally didn't offer any excuses.

"It’s a tough one because I felt like the energy was there for the Spurs game and they are a world-class team," he said. "And last week against Burnley, the energy was there in both games we played. We were really compact and solid and I thought we did really well.

"It felt like it just wasn’t there out there. The momentum never swung for us and that’s on us. We need to take full responsibility for that. We can’t blame anyone else and there is no point. We need to have a think about it."

Pre-season has been viewed as a positive and helpful exercise amongst the playing squad and management team. There has been a lot of focus on evolving and on the team's style ahead of the Scottish Premiership season.

Devlin noted the work on the training ground, in meetings and analysis as well as in the friendlies with Tottenham Hotspur and Burnley. It all fed into the frustration of Saturday's performance and result.

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"We have worked so hard and had so many meetings with the new boys, building them into how we want to play," he said.

"Last season was really successful and it was the manager’s first season. I thought we came a long way from the start until the end of the season, and then it became about building on that and becoming an even better team. We worked so hard in training, in video sessions and in games implementing our style and a big thing in that is energy and willingness.

"It’s the basis of football. You could be the best player but if you don’t want to work hard and put in the hard yards, which is how it is in Scotland and what the games are like, you are never going to win anything."

It is important to draw a line under the game. While finding positives was like searching for a needle in a haystack during a tornado there should be the understanding that it is pre-season. Looking at the bigger picture it is felt that a lot of good work has been undertaken across the last five weeks. Plus, all will be forgotten should the team go out on Saturday and beat Rangers.

While the discussion with Devlin started on a sombre note it finished with a defiant message.

"Speaking on behalf of the whole team, everyone was buzzing but it just didn’t happen for us," he said. "You’ve just got to forget about it.

"But Saturday, sold-out crowd – I’m excited for it. As the week goes on, in every session closer we’ll be buzzing for it. It’s the first game of the season and a part of the calendar that we look forward to, and there is no better fixture than a home one, no matter who it’s against.

"It’s important we get over this one and forget about it, then we review Rangers and how we will set up. The energy will be there, that’s for sure, so we will come out all guns blazing."