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4 Hearts issues Steven Naismith must address if he is to get out of jail again

It is hard not to feel Steven Naismith amid his current Hearts predicament.

A year ago he was facing early sack calls after a sluggish start to the season but stuck to his guns, rode the wave and led the team on a brilliant run of form to run away with third and all of a sudden his stock was very high. The recruitment for this season was rated highly and it was thought another positive campaign was coming.

But it has been a similar, in fact WORSE, start to the season as there was a year ago and there is unrest among the support again. Naismith got out of a hole before and could do so again, so here is a look at some of the things he must look to do in order to repeat that.

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Final third

The manager has bemoaned the play in the final third and it's not hard to see that he is right. The team have scored just two goals in all competitions this season and they were consolation goals in poor defeats to Dundee and Motherwell. He got the job promising fast, attacking football and struggled to bring it last year before things improved. There has been a regression again and they need to use the international break to try and find a recipe for success. Naismith wants more quality and better decision making in the final third - one suggestion would be to give more minutes to Yan Dhanda.

Fit new signings in

Few of the new signings have contributed enough so far. Some have even toiled to fit in. Blair Spittal has often been used as a deeper midfielder and it clearly doesn't get the best out of him. In fairness, Beni Baningime and Calem Nieuwenhof's injuries have necessitated that but the time will come to play Spittal in a more suited role. As mentioned, Dhanda hasn't had a lot of starts and neither has new Colombian left-back Andres Salazare. Youngster Musa Drammeh hasn't been seen but just scored two goals in a bounce game against St Johnstone.

Get Shankland back on form

The Jambos were accused of relying on Lawrence Shankland too much last season. You don't want to be a one-man team and Naismith must get more out of his whole team. However, someone who banged in 30 goals last season not finding the net is clearly a problem too and if the Scotland man starts firing again it would clearly be a huge help.

Defence

When Naismith took over last year, one of the main things he improved was the defence. New signing Frankie Kent was a massive part of it. There hasn't been a change of personnel at centre back (although there has at full-back) but things seem to have fallen apart. The encouraging thing is a lot of it is individual errors rather than any structural issues.