Hearts should smell Rangers blood as Steven Naismith has Hampden shock tools in his pocket - Ryan Stevenson

Lawrence Shankland is the one everyone looks to as being Hearts’ biggest weapon at Hampden. But, as I see it, Jorge Grant can be massive. So too Barrie McKay, Alan Forrest, Kenneth Vargas.

If I’m a Hearts player, I’d be smelling blood as I’m sitting watching Rangers against Dundee. And Steven Naismith is no better man to have for this semi-final situation. Sunday cannot come quickly enough because I’m sure every single Hearts player would have looked at that Rangers performance against Ross County last weekend and taken something from it.

If you assess the technical side of it, I’m convinced they will look at that game and think anything between the Rangers defence and midfield, if you can manage to get into those pockets and split those lines, they are struggling massively with it. I’ve seen it pretty much every game where Rangers have toiled. That has been their biggest issue.

Grant, McKay, Forrest, Vargas. All of those boys are capable of getting into those little pockets of space and making things happen. Of course, Lawrence can drop into those areas, too. But for County, I saw Simon Murray taking centre-halves away and him doing that left a massive space between the back four and the midfield four of Rangers.

If Hearts can do that, they can get joy. It’s a bigger pitch, but that means bigger spaces as well and this is a massive opportunity.

It’s a source of frustration for me that they haven’t done themselves justice against Rangers this season, especially given the fact two wins have been secured against Celtic. The last game at Ibrox was miserable given the fact we went into it in a good run of form and came out of it spanked 5-0. Don’t get me wrong, that can happen against the Old Firm, but it burst everyone’s