Inside the 'devastated' Hearts dressing room after Rangers loss and what lessons will be learned

Hearts stars were left gutted with defeat to Rangers at Hampden.

The defender was disappointed with Hearts elimination.

Stephen Kingsley insists Steven Naismith’s young Hearts squad will learn from the experience of action at Hampden.

Just like in the League Cup semi-final, Rangers prevailed winners over them, with the Tynecastle side yet to beat the Ibrox club in Mount Florida. Cyriel Dessers struck either side of half-time to win 2-0 and book a final with Celtic next month.

For Hearts, the attention turns to securing European group stage football through third place in the Premiership, which can be achieved this weekend with victory against fourth-placed Kilmarnock. With a young squad, Kingsley knows the team will develop from Hampden pain, as he provided a glimpse inside the crestfallen dressing room.

He said: “We’re devastated obviously, everyone is, as you can imagine. We have talked about it and, yes, we are completely disappointed. You are in there, in the dressing room, and the atmosphere is not nice.

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“It’s not where you want to be when you are coming to the big occasion and you feel like you are good enough to get a result. It is very disappointing. But we’ll use it. It is going to be sore for the next wee while but we’ll learn from it.

“We are a young team. I’m sure I heard Naisy say in the press the other day we are the second youngest in the league. We are a team who will only get better with experience.

“We have got Europe hopefully coming up if we manage to maintain our form in the league and get third wrapped up. This is all good stuff for the young boys as well as a couple of the older heads to drive us forward and to improve game after game, season after season, and try to be in that position where we are making finals, taking our chances and winning cups. That’s the goal.

“So days like this are disappointing but we need to build on it. We need to take the positives, learn from it, of course. Even looking at Macaulay Tait coming on. He found it difficult coming into a game of that magnitude at that pace when we were down.

“But what an experience that is for the boy, coming on to a game like that on that stage. That’s only going to serve him well and stand him in good stead going forward.”

A goal to Rangers within five minutes cut deep for Kingsley, who is insistent Hearts can’t start games like that. But he’s assured in the fact that Hearts were well in the mix until a telling second half strike by Dessers. He added: “When we’ve played Rangers, we have been guilty of not starting right.

“And at the start of a game – especially on a big occasion like this one – you need to be strong, you need to be resolute. You cannot give them any confidence whatsoever. They had come off the back of two poor results for their standards, so we need to start strong.

“We need to be resolute defensively, not give them an inch, not give them a chance, take away that momentum their crowd will give them and build from that. But we haven’t done that. In every game we’ve played them when we’ve been beaten, I feel that’s been the issue.

“We’ve talked about that before, about starting strong, so we’re extremely disappointed to have lost that goal in the manner we did. But we reacted to it really well and we were in the game for the rest of it. Obviously we are starting to chase it towards the end and they grab a second, which was a bit of a killer. We gave the ball away needlessly in the middle of the pitch. We did it a couple of times and got found out a couple of times.

“But that time they punished us and it was a kick in the teeth because we were in it until that point. And the last 10 minutes was scrapping, trying to get something out of it and keeping in the game. But it wasn’t to be.

“To be fair to the boys, apart from the two goals, we were always in the game. In fact, at times, actually we were maybe the better team – maybe not in terms of possession or breaking them down but getting into their half, maintaining the attacks we had, camping them in at times, especially in the second half. So it was disappointing to concede that early goal and not give ourselves a foothold in the game.”