Ryan Stevenson expects Hearts to be galvanised next season

Stevenson knows that many clubs which do well one season tend to fall away the next, as Hibernian showed by finishing tenth in the season just ended after being fourth in 2009-10. It could be argued that Hearts have suffered that trend already, having lost form over the last two or three months of the season once third place was all but assured. If that is the case, however, the former Ayr United player thinks that manager Jim Jefferies has already addressed part of the problem by signing John Sutton, Jamie Hamill and Danny Grainger. And he insists that he and his team-mates will learn from that poor run of form and come back stronger.

"Personally I never thought we were being complacent, (but] we were 12 or 13 points clear in third at one stage and you probably take the foot off the gas a wee bit," said the 26-year-old, who has just signed an option on his contract which will keep him at Tynecastle for another season. "You can't get complacent. You can't just think that you're going to turn up and win or that you deserve to be third.

"It is a massive club and the club deserves to be third and pushing Rangers and Celtic, but that doesn't just happen because it should. I think the players know that. The boys enjoyed the success we had last season, but you don't want to go back falling away and then you're looking at somebody else enjoying that success next year. If anything it's made us hungrier, and the disappointment of the cup runs has probably helped us as well, because we know we can do well in a cup if we apply ourselves right. We'll all be pushing each other on to do as well as last year, if not better. If you put that much into a season, then the next season you need to refresh and try and regroup as quickly as possible, and try to make sure you don't become complacent. I don't know if that happened at Hibs. Sometimes things just don't happen for you in a season."

Stevenson knows that self- belief can become as important as ability once clubs such as Hearts come close to the Old Firm in the league race, and thinks that he and his colleagues have the requisite confidence to put in a sustained challenge to the big two and possibly even split them. "I think we do," he said. "We managed to push them. A lot of teams come out and say we can split them and then they end up falling flat on their face.Everybody knows there is a difference in the teams and squads, but we're gradually getting better and the signings we've made are going to help as well. It's a big ask, but if we play the way we did last year, added to the players we've got coming in, there's no reason we can't do as well as we did last year."

Stevenson began last campaign as a bit-part player whose main use was as a substitute. By the end of the league race, however, he had become a key member of Jim Jefferies' team, and although he expects a tough fight to hold on to his place, he welcomes a challenge which he is confident will be for the good of the club.

"It's going to be hard," he said. "There's good competition everywhere, and players coming back from injury now - hopefully they can stay injury-free. That's what you want: coming to a club the size of Hearts it's never going to be the fact that you're playing week in, week out. But at the end of the season I got a run of games and was confident enough I could play to a standard most weeks. I managed to do that and it will be the same this season hopefully, if I can hit the ground running and get in the team. (The competition for places] is a good thing if you want to push on again. I think near the end of the season you could see we were a wee bit thin.

"The signings we've made are all good players so they're going to make us a better team, and I think the manager is trying to get another couple of players in as well. I've got to look at myself as well and hope I'm in the starting 11 come the first game."