Michael Smith explains why Hearts need to take inspiration from Rangers

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Alfredo Morelos fired Steven Gerrard’s Rangers into the Scottish League Cup final as they battered Hearts 3-0 at Hampden Park.

Hearts defender Michael Smith was in no mood to hide his anger after Sunday’s BetFred Cup semi-final thrashing against Rangers, telling the Scottish Sun that the desire of Steven Gerrard’s side put his team-mates to shame.

Alfredo Morelos produced yet another masterclass of a performance as The Gers set up a final date with Old Firm rivals Celtic, setting up Swedish centre-back Filip Helander for the opener before scoring twice himself to cap a comfortable 3-0 win.

Hearts sacked manager Craig Levein last week after a miserable start to the season and caretaker Austin MacPhee failed to get any sort of a tune out of a team bereft of confidence, fight or quality at Hampden Park.

And Northern Ireland international Smith believes that the Jambos need to take a leaf out of Rangers’ book if they want to emerge out of the 2019/20 campaign with any credit whatsoever.

“Without swearing, people need to be brave. At the minute I’m not seeing that from a lot of my team-mates. Flying into tackles should be a given, 50/50 challenges should be a given,” said the full-back.

“Just look at Rangers — every single player of theirs wanted the ball and look what happened.

“Once they scored, it was really hard for us to get something from the game. That was not the way we wanted the game to go. We were keeping them out but then we had a lapse in concentration and they scored.

“From then on in it was hard for us to get anything with the way Rangers were controlling the game.”

Rangers haven’t lifted a major trophy since the league and cup double in 2011 but they are potentially just 90 minutes away from ending that almost decade-long drought.

And if Ryan Kent, Ryan Jack and the relentless Morelos perform at Hampden Park on December 8 like they did this weekend, there is no reason why the blue half of Glasgow won’t be celebrating for a change.