Liam Boyce's influence on Hearts laid bare - even when he's not in team

Still sidelined with a tight calf, Hearts had to do without top scorer Liam Boyce as they pieced together a 5-2 win over a Dundee United side who played their part in ensuring the match was an enthralling, high tempo watch but never got quite close enough to dictating the result.

All smiles for Hearts after defeating Dundee United at Tynecastle.

However, the Northern Irishman still had a huge influence on proceedings, according to Josh Ginnelly, who was superb in spearheading the attack in the more experienced striker’s absence.

“I knew I was going to play that role on Friday so I was watching all of Boycie’s clips and trying to take in everything I could,” said Ginnelly. “It worked quite well, but there’s still more to work on.

“It’s tough. As a player you always think I’d love to be a striker. You just stand there and score, but it’s so hard.

“Somebody just watching the game doesn’t pick up on the stuff Boycey does. His intelligence on the pitch is crazy. The movement he makes, he’s always occupying two players, staying out the eye-line of players, that’s why he scores so many goals.”

As well as doing his homework, Ginnelly was able to pick the brains of the club’s primary target man, who he described as the best striker he has played with, on the way into the game.

“We came in together. He was giving me little preps and things to do, and it worked. I wanted my goal, but I’m happy with an assist and the result.”

Even without Boyce, Hearts produced some quality forward play, thanks to the movement and link up work of Ginnelly, Ben Woodburn, Barrie McKay and Cammy Devlin. With COP26 looking for cleaner ways to fuel the world, they could do worse than tap into the energy of that dynamic attack, especially when they are aided by the non-stop running of wing-backs like Alex Cochrane and Taylor Moore, who was deputising for Michael Smith.

Getting back to winning ways after their first defeat of the season last weekend, there could be few complaints about the performance delivered against one of the teams snapping at their heels.

LIverpool loanee Woodburn has proved his quality in the time he has been at Tynecastle but on Saturday he also added goals. The first was the cherry on top of some beautiful build-up work, which was slick and incisive and based on good passing and teamwork. That kick-started things for Robbie Neilson’s side. There was a second goal, a screamer from Alex Cochrane, before a deflected Ryan Edwards strike gave United hope just before the interval. But Wood burn stepped up again, this time with a beautifully-audacious chip into the top corner to reopen the two-goal gap early in the second half.

United scored again when Nicky Clark finally got the better of Craig Gordon, who was again in sensational form, but Ginnelly said that Hearts have talked about winning rather than drawing games and, making sure they would not let any points slip away against Thomas Courts’ side, they wrapped things up with goals from Stephen Kingsley and then Aaron McEneff.