What are Hearts’ ambitions for season? The Old Firm aura emitted by Tynecastle side ahead of Rangers clash and pivotal week

In great shape and on a 12-game unbeaten run, Hearts could earn a rare triple crown over the coming days

As ever before a home rugby international, Hearts players have been making nodding gestures that speak of mutual respect while passing members of the Scotland rugby side in the corridors of the sports complex where they both train on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

There’s something else the teams currently share: a quiet confidence before coming face to face with opponents they might once have felt intimidated by.

In Scotland’s case, that’s England, the side they’ve beaten in their last three encounters. As for Hearts, they might not have won against Rangers in their last 12 meetings but they came agonisingly close to doing so on their last visit to Ibrox, where they head on Saturday afternoon for Scotland’s match of the day, association football-wise at least.

Steven Naismith takes his in-form Hearts team to Ibrox on Saturday to face Rangers.

Steven Naismith lamented the “small margins” in October that saw Rangers turn Hearts' 1-0 lead on its head in the dying moments, via a penalty awarded after a VAR review in the last minute and even later Danilo winner. The head coach was still rueing those game changing moments at a pre-match press briefing at Oriam on Friday. However, while he was in a slightly precarious place in the Autumn, when his team were in the bottom half of the table and he was struggling to convince he had what it takes to lead a club like Hearts, he is sitting rather more comfortably ahead of a pivotal week for his side’s ambitions.

The Tynecastle side are nestled in behind Rangers and Celtic in what some might call a league of their own. Or is it? Eleven points behind second-place Celtic, 14 in front of Kilmarnock in fourth, what is possible between now and the end of the league season? While no one is claiming Hearts are title challengers, they can have a big say in the issue over the coming days, when they play both Rangers and Celtic. These assignments bookend a home clash against Hibs on Wednesday.

Could Hearts even split the Old Firm? Speaking on Friday, defender Stephen Kingsley admitted that another couple of wins and “you are going to start looking up rather than behind you”.

If it wasn't for such a stuttering start, when they struggled to combine their European assignments with domestic commitments, who knows what might have been possible? Naismith does not fall prey to such fruitless reflection.

Rangers' Danilo celebrates after making it 2-1 late on against Hearts in October.

“We needed to go through that,” he said, with reference to the patchy start. “I have not been anywhere where someone gets the job and it is bang! from the off, everything is perfect. There are so many instances where it takes time. I am not going to sit here and say what if? What I took positively from that early start was that a lot of the games we lost or drew, we were the makers of our downfall.

“St Mirren away we give the goal, Dundee away we give the goal, the goal against Motherwell at home was a poor goal to lose. That’s what I took from that and I think we had to go through that to get to where we are now. If you keep continuously winning your games the gap below you gets bigger but the gap above definitely gets smaller. Now we are three points off the total points we got all of last season. If we can get better than that, that’s improvement. If you continue to do that then that gap gets smaller. I have been there as a player at Kilmarnock and at Rangers, it sounds easy to do, but it is not. It is very hard to bring that consistency. For us that is the challenge, to continue being more consistent.”

They are not doing badly on that front. Eleven wins in their last 12 outings, including, right at the start of this current run, a victory in Glasgow at Celtic Park, and 28 points from 30. These are, dare we say it, Old Firm-style statistics. And while we are not – yet – hailing Hearts for making it a three-horse title race, Naismith concedes his side are carrying something of an Old Firm aura in terms of the way opposition teams now treat them.

They are needing to think like Rangers and Celtic when it comes to figuring out how to navigate packed defences. Hearts enjoyed 70 per cent possession in last weekend’s 2-0 win over Motherwell, with the breakthrough not coming until after the hour mark through Lawrence Shankland. Frustration was building in the stands. “Our last two games against Motherwell and St Johnstone have effectively been the exact same game,” said Naismith. “Both teams have sat really deep and tried to counter us. One was at home and one was away, that is what we are now facing. That mentality change is just as important as trying to compete and beat the Old Firm in a game. I think we will look back at the end of the season and see where we are but there has definitely been a shift in that (belief they can beat Rangers and Celtic).”

He can see other similarities, particularly one that Hearts will hope to exploit. Expectation. Rangers are now top and this lofty place has been hard-earned. Fans won't accept potentially surrendering poll position at the first opportunity, with Celtic due at Motherwell on Sunday. The home crowd could get edgy if Hearts can frustrate the hosts long enough. “We’ve got the same demand at home,” he pointed out. “Our crowd is demanding and if we are not winning by half time we know what the feeling can be. It’s the same there (at Ibrox). We will reference it but ultimately that is not going to get us the win. It’s how we do on the pitch, what we do with the ball and how we go about defending and how organised we are off the ball. But it (fans becoming restless) is something that can be useful if it turns out that way.”