Lawrence Shankland demands Hearts heed harsh Celtic warning as Rangers repeat won't be pretty

Lawrence Shankland has told Hearts they must heed the harsh warnings flagged up by Celtic before heading to Ibrox on Sunday to face Rangers.

The Tynecastle skipper insists Stevie Naismith’s men need to ensure their collapse against the champions is not repeated against the other half of the Old Firm. Shankland knows it wasn’t good enough against Brendan Rodgers’ side as a slow start and sloppy mistakes led to a hefty 4-1 defeat. Naismith’s wounded troops must immediately recover as next up they face a trip to tackle Philippe Clement’s newly charged outfit.

Shankland insists the fresh test will ensure the Celtic disappointment is quickly put aside but the captain is also adamant lessons must be learned from the loss. He said: “We’ll definitely have to improve. When you play the Old Firm you know they have got that quality. If you are not on the top of your game they can make things really difficult for you.

“We need to take it (the Celtic game) as a wee warning. We can use it in the right way ahead of going to Ibrox. We need to go in confident. We can’t think, ‘That’s going to happen again.’ We can’t do that. We move on.

“It’s a completely different game, a different team. It will be a tough ask but we will be looking to go to Ibrox and get a result.”

Shankland hasn’t looked for excuses after the weekend battering which left the manager frustrated and the fans angry. Hearts were booed by their own punters as the champions ran riot in Gorgie and the manager was annoyed at the self-inflicted wounds.

Shankland said: “It’s disappointing overall, obviously, the result. The goals that Celtic scored, from our point of view, it didn’t feel like they had to work too hard to score them. That’s disappointing for us. We came into the