STEVEN Naismith today admitted that Hearts did not deserve to be awarded a penalty in their William Hill Premiership opener against Rangers – but insisted his side did enough to win the game.
Naismith appealed for a spot kick towards the end of the first-half when Connor Barron clearly handled a Yan Dhanda cross inside his own area only for referee Nick Walsh to allow play to continue.
But the former Scotland internationalist, whose team were held to a goalless draw by their Ibrox rivals in their first competitive match of the 2024/25 campaign, confessed afterwards that the match official had got the call right.
The ex-Rangers forward did, though, argue that his charges, who dominated the opening 45 minutes of the encounter with Philippe Clement’s men, should have picked up all three points.
“I don’t think it’s a penalty, if I’m honest,” he said. “Last season there was a big debate. Willie (SFA head of refereeing Collum) and the referees and the league have done a lot to clear things up.
“There has been a conscious effort to stop you guys (the media) asking that question to write about it. You will stop it (the video replay), you will see it, people will say it’s unnatural. But if you’ve played the game, there isn’t much he can do so I don’t think it’s a penalty.”
Naismith added: “I know the headlines will all be ‘Rangers have dropped points’, but I think we should have won the game. We created good chances, had really good moments, had more of them. First half, our performance was really good.
“They then need to change what they are doing to try and get a foothold in the game and they did to a point, but it was all in front of us, never really caused us too many problems.
“They are direct so they are going to get some chances off the back of that, but I thought we played really well today. The only thing missing was a goal or two.
“There are always things in a game you can do better, but we controlled the game. But as I said it will be ‘Rangers have dropped points’. We played so well in the first half, had so much control, all that was missing was the finishing touches.
“The first month of every season is like that, you are always going to have moments where chances go abegging because everybody is not into their stride in the competitive games.
“We will take confidence from the performance, but we are not just going to go away from the game today saying, ‘Brilliant’. It is hard work over the last six weeks that we have done, the new players coming in they all contributed.”
Naismith refused to be drawn on Hearts’ pursuit of Colombian left back Andres Salazar even though the defender was at Tynecastle to take in the Rangers match. “We’ll see how that develops in the coming days,” he said.
Meanwhile, Barron has stated that he was certain that Walsh would not give the spot kick. “I was confident it wouldn’t be a penalty,” he told Sky Sports. “My arms were right by my side, but you never know what can happen. It goes through your head a little bit but I knew I was safe.
“We didn’t get the three points so it wasn’t the perfect day for me. The result wasn’t exactly what we wanted to go out and do today.
“But I think there were good bits in there that we can look at going forward and bits we can get better at. It’s going to be a long season so it’s about us picking ourselves up after games like today and making sure we correct things.”
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