James Tavernier has issued his annual pre-season rallying call.
The former Wigan Athletic utility man is the last survivor from Mark Warburton’s 2016 Petrofac Cup winning side, suffering four seasons of constant failure in the top flight.
Tav was at the centre of two cup defeats last seasons, passing a penalty kick against Celtic in the League Cup Final to Alfredo Morelos then setting Hearts up for the goal that ended another Scottish Cup dream.
In the final home SPFL match before Lockdown Tav used his programme notes to explain to fans how their heroes couldn’t cope with the pressure that comes with being expected to beat teams at the bottom of the table.
Reflecting on the glory of beating Lyon in a friendly the man with the armband of dignity told The Sun:
It’s just about the games where we didn’t come up to the right level. You saw the European games where we put in top performances but we’d come into a league game and not deliver the same levels of cutting edge in the final third, stuff like that.
We were good in our defensive duties last season but that can always be improved on. And in the final third we need to be more clinical to finish off teams and see games out.
We’ve just got to apply ourselves the way we did against Lyon. We’ve got to apply ourselves like that in every single game and be more clinical in front of goal.
Against Lyon, we missed a couple of chances where we could have gone three or four up, so we need to work on that to take into the league.
Hopefully we’ll finish off chances, so there aren’t games like Hamilton last season at home where we lost 1-0 at home and had something like 26 chances. Those are the games where we need to put the ball in the back of the net and keep on going.
Since losing the title last season Mister Gerrard has added Calvin Bassey and Job McLaughlin with Andy Halliday, Wes Foderingham, Matt Polster, Jon Flanagan, Jason Holt and Jordan Rossiter leaving the club.