The key tactical changes Steven Naismith has made at Hearts

After serving as interim manager for the final seven games of the previous campaign, Naismith was appointed as technical director during the close season and Frankie McAvoy named head coach on account of the former not holding the required Pro License qualification to manage in European competition. After the team was eliminated from the Europa Conference League, a reshuffle earlier this month saw a return to the structure from the end of last season with Naismith in the head coach role and McAvoy returning to his assistant coach position. As the former Hearts, Everton and Rangers striker explained before the Aberdeen game, though, little had changed behind the scenes at Tynecastle.

“It probably helps everybody on the outside and everything is now crystal clear,” Naismith said. “But I’m not going to sit here and say anything’s changing because it’s not. We aren’t going to use that. From the moment I took charge of the last seven games of last season nothing has changed. It’s the same routine, we work as a group and everybody’s opinion is welcome. It makes it look cleaner on the outside but nothing has changed internally and everyone has been comfortable with it from the off.”

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Heading into the recent international break, the moans and groans coming from the Hearts support were growing louder. Dour and ponderous performances against Kilmarnock, Dundee and Motherwell had reaped a single point and only a handful of attempts on goal, and the team’s European adventure was ended for another season after the players were outclassed by PAOK over two legs.

The victory over Aberdeen, though, offered plenty of room for encouragement. Hearts were more proactive at winning the ball back, created numerous goalscoring chances and managed the game well after taking an early lead through Yutaro Oda. The performance was a lot more similar to what supporters had seen during Naismith’s interim spell in charge at the tail end of last season – playing on the front foot and being aggressive out of possession, while remaining rigid at the back.

So, what exactly has changed since Neilson was relieved of his duties? Is the team progressing under Naismith, and what areas require a little more work? Let’s take a look (Note: all figures are based on cinch Premiership fixtures).

The defence

We might as well start at the back. Many newly-appointed managers tend to initially focus on tightening up the defence and laying foundations that can be built on further down the line, and Naismith appears to be no different.

In Neilson’s final season in charge, Hearts were shipping 1.5 goals per league outing – a simply unsustainable rate for any team with ambitions of finishing third – but that figure has dropped to around 1.0 under Naismith. They have gone from being one of the leakiest teams in the division to one of the most watertight, and are looking far more secure at the back since Naismith implemented his preferred 4-2-3-1 formation.

Take a look at the above graphic. The red shape shows some key defensive statistics in the 12 league games with Naismith in charge of the team, while the blue represents the previous 31 under Neilson. The bigger the dial, the better a team is performing in that particular metric. If a spoke reaches all the way to the edge, then Hearts are among the top-performing teams in the league in that area. If it is close to the centre, then the team is underperforming in that metric compared to the rest of the league.

Both the number of shots conceded and their quality have dramatically reduced on Naismith’s watch. The opposition are regularly struggling to break the Hearts defence down and Hearts’ expected goals conceded (xGC) has plummeted as a result. There are fewer clear-cut-chances, and the team is not as vulnerable on the counter-attack as it once was.

This should be seen as highly encouraging, but there are one or two areas of concern too. The first relates to set-pieces. In Naismith’s dozen games in charge, Hearts are conceding 0.42 goals per game – one of the highest rates of any team in the Premiership. It wasn’t much better under Neilson, sitting at 0.35, but that may be down to luck: Hearts’ xGC from set-pieces has remained exactly the same under both managers (0.42).

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The other issue lies slightly further up the park. PPDA (passes allowed per defensive action) is a metric that gives an indication of how effective a team’s pressing is by measuring how many passes an opponent averages before the ball is won back. The good news is that Hearts’ PPDA of 7.43 is one of the best rates in the league but when we dig a little deeper, we can see that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Hearts’ opponents aren’t playing too many passes before being dispossessed of the ball, but there has been a distinct lack of aggression in midfield at times during the season’s opening exchanges. Naismith’s team are amongst the lowest in the league when it comes to pressuring an opponent for the ball and they have recorded the fewest aggressive actions of anyone. The chopping and changing in central midfield when players have picked up injuries hasn’t helped, but it’s an area with plenty of room for improvement. The graphic below (based on data for this season's league fixtures so far) shows the areas of the park where Hearts are pressing and how that compares to their Premiership contemporaries, with the black squares indicating low activity and the red ones high. Eagle-eyed readers will notice that with the exception of one central defensive position in midfield, there is a gaping black hole right in between both boxes. 

Part of the reason for this will be the fact that Hearts have generally enjoyed more of the ball than their opponents – they averaged around 60 per cent possession in the games against Kilmarnock, Dundee and Motherwell – and juggling playing in Europe and on the home front will have undoubtedly taken its toll, too. The return of Beni Baningime should help, as should the addition of Calem Nieuwenhof, but it is an area that is already being addressed by Naismith.

After the Motherwell loss, Naismith spoke of using the international break to work on particular issues in the team and the evidence from the win over Aberdeen is that they have done precisely that. The team’s aggression off the ball was more like what we had seen during Naismith’s interim stint in charge. The result? A comfortable three points. One swallow does not make a summer, but it was a welcome change in direction.

The attack

There are a few interesting trends at the other end too. The team’s goalscoring output has dipped compared to Neilson’s time in charge, dropping from 1.6 goals per game to 1.4 (although this is still one of the better rates in the league), despite the fact that the team average an additional two shots per game on average. Curiously, though, Hearts’ expected goals (xG) and the number of clear shots created per game are virtually identical under both managers. Neilson’s side created fewer opportunities but the ones they did fashion were more likely to go in; under Naismith, quantity is valued above quality.

That’s not to say Hearts are just hitting and hoping when afforded a sight of goal, though. The team’s xG might not have materially changed during Naismith’s 12 games in charge, but it would be no surprise to see this figure rise in the coming months. The foundations are being laid to create higher-quality chances, after all.

There appears to be more structure to Hearts’ attacking play of late. A relatively high proportion of passes in the final third are crosses – an understandable decision, given wide players will be aiming for Lawrence Shankland and Liam Boyce in the middle – but their success rate has dipped a little. The biggest change we’re seeing, though, is that Hearts are relying on passing, not dribbling, to get the ball into dangerous areas.

Part of that is down to the departure of Josh Ginnelly. The English forward possessed pace to burn and was able to stretch opposition defences before his summer transfer to Swansea City, and this proved to be an effective weapon in the team’s attacking arsenal. For all the benefits of the Boyce-Shankland partnership, there is no getting around the fact that neither player is especially blessed with pace. The absence of Barrie McKay to injury, too - the winger attempted the most dribbles per game of any Hearts player last season (3.41), and completed more succesful dribbles (1.52) - has surely played its part here.

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This has led to a change in tack. The number of passes into the box and deep completions (passes completed within 20 metres of the opposition goal) have dramatically risen to the point where Hearts are one of the highest-performing teams in the league in these areas. Getting the ball to feet in these areas of the pitch should lend a greater degree of control to the receiver – and, given time, the quality of the final ball into Shankland or Boyce should follow suit. As it stands, the team are getting the ball into more dangerous areas than they had previously, but that all-important final pass has been lacking on occasion. If Hearts can find it more regularly, the team’s xG and scoring output has the potential to improve dramatically.

There is another issue with the xG, too: the manner in which it is accrued. During the tail end of last season, most of Hearts' xG in any given match was generated in the first half, indicating that they were aggressive from the get-go. Nothing could be further from the truth this term, though: of the 5.89 xG that Hearts have racked up in the league this season, just 1.03 (a mere 17.5 per cent of the total) has come in the first half. There are other factors at play here - opposition fatigue, for instance, or the game becoming stretched and more open as the clock approaches the 90-minute mark - but it is hard to escape the conclusion that Hearts have been too slow out of the traps too often this season.

Attacking set-pieces also remain an issue. The team performed relatively poorly in this regard (compared to the rest of the league) during Neilson’s final season, both in terms of goals and xG. There’s been a slight change under Naismith (Hearts’ xG from dead-ball situations has risen marginally, while the goal return has slightly dipped) but both statistics tell the same story: Hearts aren’t making the most of free-kicks and corners when they arise. In fact, under Naismith, they're underperforming in this regard.

Hearts remain a work in progress. Set-pieces at both ends are still a concern, and the team could certainly be more aggressive in midfield when it comes to winning the ball back. Having said that, the defensive foundations laid by Naismith are being built on and attacking moves are becoming more sophisticated, and therefore harder to defend against.

Naismith will be hoping that Saturday’s win over Aberdeen becomes the standard, and not the outlier, in terms of the team’s performances this season. The head coach promised supporters front-foot, aggressive football during his stint as interim manager last season and although we have seen that in fits and bursts, the challenge now is to reproduce that level of performance on a weekly basis. The underlying figures suggest Naismith and Hearts can do precisely that – but it will take a little more work until the new manager's vision for the future of this team is fully realised.