Novikovas keen for first-team action and at right club to thrive

TYNECASTLE is one of the last bastions of a dying breed in Scottish football. Dynamic widemen who can excite an anticipant and expectant crowd are often referred to in contemporary football parlance as "old-fashioned wingers", which suggests that rare examples such as Arvydas Novikovas should not only be preserved but given the environment to thrive and flourish.

His team-mates David Templeton, Andy Driver and Suso Santana may also fit in the same mould as the perceived "throwback" to the kind of carefree and uninhibited style of play reminiscent of a bygone generation.

In a country where losing possession is deemed careless and doing so while attempting fancy footwork or taking on a player is considered criminal, it requires a degree of bravery by a manager to entrust such a "luxury player" into his starting line-up.

While Derek McInnes at St Johnstone handed Novikovas just 150 minutes of first-team action during the Lithuanian's unfruitful six-month loan stint in Perth during the latter part of last season, Jim Jefferies has embraced the similar styles of Templeton, Driver and Suso.

This pre-season, Novikovas has been afforded licence to entertain fans in Italy, Fife and Germany, and his direct approach has elicited praise from Jefferies, East Fife manager John Robertson, and many more onlookers.

What has set him - and Templeton - apart in those games has been an ambition to pass a defender using skill and pace. Goals aside, there are few greater thrills in the game, and Novikovas has the audacity to pull it off.

The 20-year-old is blessed with a healthy air of arrogance, a confidence in his own ability, and a belief that he can and will make a positive impact in the coming campaign. Crucially, he is not the type to stomp his feet and demand a transfer or even come knocking on the manager's door if he does not feature regularly this term. Despite his youth, Novikovas is already a full international with Lithuania, but it is testament to his grounded nature that he feels more inclined to bide his time for a chance under Jefferies, recognising as he does the scale of the task to nose ahead of Hearts' other, more experienced flying wingers in the race for a first team start.

"I feel good," he said after his third outing, against German local league side Ludwigsfelder. "This season I want to play - maybe not all the time, but I want to play well. Maybe to come on at half time and use my pace.

"Competition can only improve you as a player, and this is great for me. They (Templeton, Driver and Suso] are all fantastic. It will be difficult for me to get in the team."

Only once when talking to the Evening News does Novikovas betray his mature outlook, and even then the circumstances that provoke his minor huff would perhaps even reduce the most seasoned veteran to bitterness. Having started twice and emerged from the bench six times for Hearts during the first half of 2010/11, Novikovas had two goals to his name, as well as a memorable assist in the form of a cross onto the head of Kevin Kyle for the winning goal in the 86th minute of the New Year's Day Edinburgh Derby at Tynecastle. McInnes at McDiarmid Park was one of many to recognise a talent previously kept secret due to the aforementioned wingers already established at Hearts, and Novikovas was farmed out to the Fair City.

"I didn't play," he reflects bluntly. "If I stay at Hearts, I would play more. It was not a good time for me, having to go 100 miles to Perth (and back] for a home game.

"I don't want to go on loan this year. I want to stay and fight for my place."He looks part of the furniture within the first team squad, integrating effectively not only by his level of on-field performance but his jovial nature away from the training ground. At such a tender age, he's not exactly the ringleader, himself identifying compatriot Marius Zaliukas, David Obua and Adrian Mrowiec as the jokers of the pack. His plan is to stick around and savour a settled Jambos first-team setup of which he will look to become an integral part. Driver and Suso are both currently injured, but at least on the evidence of last season that pair and Templeton appear to be at the forefront of Jefferies' mind when considering who will fill the flanks.

Evolution is only natural, though. Novikovas has breathed life into the endangered species of the "old-fashioned winger", but he could also be the one to render extinct those more experienced purveyors of trickery and skill on the flank.