Naismith delighted to keep hold of Shankland
Steven Naismith is looking forward to “putting to bed” speculation surrounding the future of Lawrence Shankland after the January transfer window closed with no bids being received for Hearts’ talismanic forward.
The Hearts boss also confirmed that negotiations about extending the inform 28-year-old’s contract – which expires in the summer of 2025 – have been put on hold after the striker rejected two improved offers from the Edinburgh club in recent weeks.
Naismith is delighted to have held on to Shankland until the end of the season at least and is comfortable with the striker, who has been the subject of much hype after scoring 47 goals since joining Hearts in the summer of 2022, taking all the time he needs to weigh up his future.
“I’m delighted Shanks has stayed,” the manager said at his media briefing yesterday ahead of today’s trip to Dundee. “All that speculation can now be put to bed, although it didn’t really affect him – his performances over the past two or three months have been brilliant.
“We’ve been speaking to him about a contract and there was a deadline on that [of Wednesday night this week], more just to get to an end-point at this moment in time, so everything is now just focused on the second part of the season. Everything else after that will take care of itself.”
Naismith continued: “Nothing has changed from our point of view. We want Lawrence to be here as long as he can be. If in the future something can be done, we’ll look to do that. Lawrence is at a massively important part of his
career so he needs to weigh everything up and if that takes time, then that will take time.”
Naismith confirmed that Hearts have agreed a precontract to sign Ross County midfielder Yan Dhanda in the summer. “That situation is something I’m not overly comfortable talking about but there is an agreement there,” he said.
“We had an honest conversation with the other club out of respect to tell them. what was happening and we asked if there was a possibility [of buying him in January] but he wasn’t for sale so that was the end of it, really.”
Naismith was satisfied with a window that saw Hearts recruit Wolves rightback Dexter Lembikisa and Charlton midfielder Scott Fraser on loan until end of the season while rebuffing an approach from Fleetwood for defender Toby Sibbick. “As expected,” he said when asked to assess his January business.
“We identified an area we really needed to do some dealings on and we managed to do that early on with Dexter coming in. And, like we said, if there was something else we could do that would improve us, we would look at it and we managed to get Scott done.”
There was some bad news for Hearts, though, after Naismith revealed that striker Liam Boyce could be sidelined for a couple of months with a tendon injury.
“Liam Boyce has had a set-back in his recovery and will need surgery,” Naismith added. “That sounds dramatic but we’re looking at a timeline of six to eight weeks for Boycie. His hamstring injury proved to be more of a tendon issue, rather than purely muscle.”
Liam Boyce: Injury blow