Naismith poised for derby match debut after agreeing to join Hearts
● Tynecastle club hope to have striker signed in time for cup derby with Hibs
Scotland striker Steven Naismith has agreed to join Hearts on loan until the end of the season and is expected to undergo a medical today.
The Edinburgh club plan to have the 31-year-old signed in time to make his debut in Sunday’s Scottish Cup tie against Hibs. They are currently finalising details with his club Norwich City, but all parties are willing for the deal to happen.
Naismith has agreed to the move after falling out of favour at Norwich and, barring any unexpected hitches, the former Everton striker should put pen to paper by the weekend.
He has not played competitively since August but is now preparing to be pitched into an Edinburgh derby.
He was linked with his former clubs Rangers and Kilmarnock but his next destination looks likely to be Tynecastle. With 45 Scotland caps, he is keen to continue his international career and will hope that joining Hearts can keep him in the national squad.
Alan Stubbs, a former coach at Everton, worked with Na is mi that good is on and believes he will prove to be a very good signing for Hearts, although he’s surprised the Norwich player wasn’t snapped up by another English Championship club. “He has great attributes, he’s a great lad, very down to earth, humble,” the former Hibs manager said.
“His workrate for the team is very, very good. He obviously knows where the goal is and he doesn’t pick up a lot of injuries.
“He’s great in the air, as a defender he is a pest to play against even although he isn’t the biggest. He has great spring, he will rattle you, rile you, get on your nerves.
“He is a clever player, has a very good understanding of his role. He never stops working, sometimes he works too hard, runs around too much to be honest.
“It seems a bit strange to say, but that’s in his make-up.
“I’m a bit surprised, not because it’s Hearts, but that I thought there would be clubs in the Championship who may have been on the table.
“There may be other things around it, maybe Steven wanted to get back to Scotland. That could be a big factor in it, but they have got themselves a very good player.”
Paulo Sergio has revealed how he felt “betrayed” by Hearts only months after giving the club’s fans the day of their lives with their epic 5-1 Scottish Cup final drubbing of Hibs.
Sergio claimed during that season he was promised a new two or three-year deal, only to find that then owner Vladimir Romanov wanted to slash his wages.
Adamant the Hampden triumph of 2012 still thrills him to this day and that he still follows Hearts, he said: “The positives always stay stronger in our hearts than the negatives.
“I read a lot in the newspapers and social media about Hearts, I follow the club all the time.
“The cup final win is part of the history, but sometimes a lot of people forget just how tough it was that season with all the difficulties we had in financial terms. For instance, I read people
saying that season we only finished fifth in the league but no-one remembers that in December we were third and fighting with Rangers, close to them.
“But then we sold four of five players because we needed the money and afterwards we rebuilt the team with some youngsters coming through and others who hadn’t been playing much until then. So in the end we did a fantastic job altogether, finishing with a cup final win.”
At that point, Sergio felt his future in Edinburgh was secure.
He said: “I did nothing to find another job at that time because I was speaking with the people in the club who had been promising me a renewal of my deal that would allow me to stay for another two or three years.
“I was very happy about that but in the end, after the cup final, when we all sat around the table they were offering me less than half of what I had been earning before. I almost felt I had been betrayed. I had done nothing to find a new job and we were already at a stage of the year when the best jobs had gone so I could not move on to a better place. I was betrayed by those people.” l Paulo Sergio was speaking at a William Hill media event. William Hill is the proud sponsor of the Scottish Cup.