Alex Lowry turns Hearts criticism into praise as Steven Naismith hails Rangers loanee's response

Alex Lowry was praised for the role he played in Hearts’ comfortable 4-0 victory over Partick Thistle.

Hearts technical director Steven Naismith with Rangers loannee Alex Lowry at full time after the 4-0 win over Partick Thistle. (Photo by Mark Scates / SNS Group)

Moved into a more central role, the Rangers loanee was involved in three of the goals, sending in the corner that opened the scoring. That set piece delivery was headed on by Kye Rowles before ricocheting off Partick Thistle captain Brian Graham’s leg and past his own goalkeeper David Mitchell.

But Hearts technical director Steven Naismith insisted there was more to the 20-year-old’s contribution than set piece deliveries.

“That’s just one of the qualities he’s got. He’s a real talent. He has probably not played enough football for a guy his age, with what he has got. In past games I’ve probably been a wee bit critical of him in the moments where he loses the ball – what are you doing? Are you going to be involved in the game or not? But I thought today he probably drove us in those moments.

“In his youth career and being at a bigger club, you can do what you want in that environment and still get the ball back. Here, you need to work hard and need to do everything that the team needs you to do and I think, today, he showed that.

“It is pleasing that he is learning from those moments because he has probably not been at that level in the last couple of games.”

A player who was part of a re-jigged Hearts side that built on Thursday night’s European success by booking their place in the quarter-finals of the Viaplay Cup. And, Naismith said that there would be more shuffling of personnel as the fixtures continued to come at them thick and fast. However, he explained that it would be a case of picking the team best suited to each match rather than simply resting tired legs.

“This game suited a lot of the players who did come in. Each game is different so what we need on Thursday is different to what we will need next Sunday and that will be different from the following Thursday. So, everybody is starting to understand. It is not that there is one stronger team over the other. There are different games for different players and today the guys who came in brought energy, and hard work, and, especially in the first half, when we won the ball back, we were in good positions and we very rarely gave up an opportunity for them to attack us.

“It was a very good performance. We scored four good goals and kept a clean sheet - that’s a good afternoon. Cup ties can be awkward because people think, against a team from the division below, it will be easy. We stressed that to the players. We knew it could be awkward after Thursday night.

“There is always going to be a bit of a lull and there probably was to start with all around the stands. It was slow at times but when we moved the ball quicker we were a real threat. We scored four good goals off the back of that.”

Along with Lawrence Shankland’s fourth goal in five games, there was one from Odel Offiah on his debut, and a first goal for Kyosuke Tagawa to wrap things up.