Michael Smith is looking for Hearts to get their season back on track when they host RFS in the Europa Conference League on Thursday.
The Jam Tarts haven't won in six matches and were on the wrong end of a 4-3 thriller to Celtic at the weekend. But Smith reckons there's enough character in the squad to get out of the "rut" that they are currently in when RFS arrive at Tynecastle on Thursday with the Scottish Premiership side winning the reverse fixture 2-0 in Riga. Hearts also sit a point above the Latvians in Group A and a win could put them in touching distance of Fiorentina, should they lose to Istanbul Basaksehir.
"We will be looking to do that but it’s not going to be an easy game,” Smith told the Edinburgh Evening News. “We beat them over in Latvia but they have shown they can get results against good teams. At Tynecastle, if we show the same energy, desire and bravery we showed against Celtic, I think we can come away with a result.
“I think we showed a bit of fight, a bit of bravery, but that should be standard for us,” added Smith. “We still lost the game.
"You can take little bits of belief from it but we are disappointed we didn’t take any points. It’s just the way things are happening for us just now. We’ve conceded a free header in the box, little deflections fell to them, it’s all coming thick and fast. We have to stick together and we will definitely get out of this rut.
“Against Celtic, you have to take care of the midfield. I thought the three boys in there (Cammy Devlin, Orestis Kiomoirtzoglou and Robert Snodgrass) were really good in the first half. The two wide men helped cover pockets of space to stop Reo Hatate getting on the ball. In the second half, I thought we stopped doing that and lost a little bit of energy from the first half. They found space and managed to dominate more. For most of the game, the shape was spot on and the boys worked their socks off.”
But Smith believes the qualities shown in Saturday's thriller against Ange Postecoglou's men shouldn't be met with such fanfare because it should be a given for any team. And he has lamented the Gorgie club conceding "silly goals" too often.
“To be honest, it’s a mystery why that comes out of our game sometimes,” admits the 34-year-old. “That should be a given for any team – coming out and going after opponents, being brave, trying to get on the ball.
"Sometimes, with a little lack of confidence, it does drop away and you start to lose that. On Saturday, I thought we got it back. We were really up for the game. We are conceding silly goals but we are where we are and we need to start picking up points.”
READ NEXT:
