What Craig Gordon wants Hearts teammate Shankland to remember amid tough period as striker backed to recover
The goalie for Hearts has a message for his teammate.
Despite a difficult run in front of goal, Craig Gordon is optimistic that Hearts teammate Lawrence Shankland will remember his skill.
The striker has only managed one goal this season, but Scotland manager Steve Clarke has been enough impressed with him overall to give him another call-up for games against Croatia and Poland with the national squad. Portugal is in its Nations League A Group 1 group, and Clarke’s team wants to avoid finishing last.
Gordon, the goalie for Hearts, is also in the camp and thinks the striker can improve his play. Gordon wants the forward to remember the affection he got when he was in his best form, scoring 31 goals the previous season, even though he can’t come up for every Hearts corner as he did when Shankland scored in a tie with Ross County.
I believe that sometimes simply discussing it keeps it in the air,” he remarked. Perhaps it’s best to avoid talking about it too much. I’ve witnessed his potential every day for the past many years, so I know how amazing he can be. I only hope he keeps that in mind and realises how talented he is, because when he is fire and self-assured then
He’s very good in and out of the box and as a finisher. You simply expect him to toss it in the net if it lands on him. Everyone starts talking about it once it doesn’t happen for a few months.
“I just hope he remembers how great he is, how he’s felt over the past few years, and how much the fans loved him at that time.”
He is an excellent player, and I have no doubt that he will resume his goal-scoring ways. I’m not able to assist him too much with it. He earned his goal this season because I went up for a corner and took the defenders away, but I’m not able to do much more to help him! I’m taking
“Everyone knows how good he is at scoring goals, and that will eventually come back,” he continued. He has been training with us for the past few weeks, and it’s clear that he is giving it his all.
His touch has been excellent at times. Although his goal-scoring prowess in training hasn’t translated to games, I have no doubts whatsoever that he will soon resume his goal-scoring ways. He is too skilled a player for that to continue for very long.
It’s fantastic that he’s here, that he’s receiving support, and that he can still be the primary striker and go-to player to score goals. At Hearts in particular, he remains the one that we
Gordon has returned to the top spot for both club and country after defeating Zander Clark at club level and regaining his spot on the national team after losing out on Euro 2024. He is in good physical health and expects that Scotland, a smaller country, can learn from Croatia’s achievements in major competitions.
“Yeah, I feel fine,” the keeper replied. In addition to making sure my workload and training are appropriate, I also need to make sure I’m recuperating between games. However, everything are going nicely right now. I think I’m playing the games without any issues. There won’t be any issues because I’m still training effectively and the preparations are going smoothly.
Croatia has achieved great achievement. It takes more than one squad to perform as well as they have, and they have done so for as long. Both the team and the players who joined it have been successfully reimagined. There is also the more seasoned bunch, several of whom having approximately 100 caps. They’ve done a great job replacing that.
“It’s something they’ve been able to achieve consistently; it’s not luck or a single team. All of the smaller countries with lesser populations must be able to aim for that and demonstrate what is feasible. They’ve made it to the very end of finals without winning, but they’ve been there or very close on a number of occasions.
For many smaller countries, that would be the ideal situation. We must take that as motivation and work towards achieving it.
“To give ourselves the chance in the second game in Poland, we’ll be out to give everything in this first game,” Gordon continued.
“We’re giving it our all on Friday night in an effort to make that happen, to try to keep us in the group, and to put us in a strong position for the final match against Poland.”
