Hearts reaction: Gerald Taylor 'excitement', Spurs verdict, why Liam Boyce missed out

The Costa Rican 23-year-old made his first appearance for the Jambos in Wednesday night's 5-1 pre-season friendly defeat by Tottenham Hotspur and was one of the hosts' strongest players, both in attack and defence. Taylor arrived on loan from Deportivo Saprissa in his homeland and Naismith believes he will be an "exciting player".

"There were lots of his attributes on show tonight," said Naismith. "He's powerful, he's quick, his reading of the game, happy to defend one-v-one. We've watched him a lot. It's harder bringing players from other leagues and how they are going to fit into Scottish football.

"He's won trophies, he's played at a club with demand, he's played international football, he's played at major tournaments internationally so it minimises the risk and I said when he signed he was going to be an exciting player and we seen glimpses of that tonight."

Hearts pulled level with Tottenham after 46 minutes via Lawrence Shankland to cancel out Brennan Johnson's opener but the visitors pressed on afterwards, with Mikey Moore, Will Linkshear, Djed Spence and Ashley Phillips adding to the goal tally in the second half. Despite the heavy nature of the scoreline, Naismith was pleased with the outing.

"I thought it was a really good night," continued Naismith. "The game comes probably a bit earlier than we ideally want in pre-season. Last year we had Leeds as our last game which was a brilliant test, this would have been a similar fixture. The way it landed with the commitments and the back story of the game, it comes earlier.

"I thought there were loads of positives, especially in the first half. When you go toe-to-toe with a team like Spurs you are going to get picked off and that's what you see at the end of the game. At the start, we create as many good chances as they have, we should have scored. We were patient and tried to use this more as what could be an opportunity to play against a team in Europe so I thought from that aspect it was good. We carried a threat, we had pace, we made good decisions.

"The game gets a bit stretched toward the end when we are bringing on some young guys who are just making their way in the game and the young players they are bringing on have been bought for £10million, the gap widens. I actually thought a lot of the goals we conceded tonight were one mistake in the chain but it gets punished because of the quality of player, that is evidently what happened. But it was really good, a really good test and one we can take positives from."

Hearts were without striker Liam Boyce, who scored in last weekend's friendly defeat by Leyton Orient, with the Northern Irishman suffering from an illness. “He has been ill," updated Naismith. "I didn’t even expect to see him tonight. He is feeling b better but the last two days he has been in his bed."

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