By MARK BONTHRONE
HEARTS captain Christophe Berra believes the club's recent upturn in fortunes is down to interim head coach Stephen Frail helping to bring the feel-good factor back to training sessions.
The Gorgie outfit have won four of their last five SPL matches and there's been a marked improvement in performances which have coincided with Frail being handed sole control of team affairs.

A consistency of team selection – the Jambos now have a settled goalkeeper and back four – have undoubtedly helped as Hearts have moved to within three points of a place in the top six.

But Berra has revealed that the first step to improving results was to make sure the players enjoyed reporting to Riccarton each day.

Bulgarian coach Angel Chervenkov had presided over training routines that left the playing staff far from enthused – but all that has now changed.

"Stephen Frail has taken over and training has changed quite a bit," revealed Berra.

"The players now enjoy coming to training because it's sharper, more game-based and there is a competitive edge.

"Before people weren't looking forward to it because it was low tempo and they weren't enjoying it so that is one of the main changes.

"Since Shaggy has taken over I don't think the back four has changed either and that's showed.

"Even in training we do 15-20 minutes each day just on the back four with waves of attack and where we should be as a defence. Before we weren't doing that. I think that's shown in our recent results.

"A lot of credit also has to go to the midfielders and strikers as they've been more disciplined and have been working harder." Hearts' new found resolve will be given a stern examination tomorrow night when SPL l
eaders Rangers travel to Tynecastle looking to maintain their advantage at the top of the table.

Walter Smith's men have already lost once this season in Gorgie and Berra is adamant that with the help of the Hearts support he and his team-mates can repeat the feat.

"Not many teams want to come to Tynecastle, under the floodlights when it's live on television and we want to make it hard for them," he said.

"We know it's going to be very difficult because Rangers are very solid in defence and don't concede many goals. They've come here before and we won 4-2 in a very exciting game.

"Hopefully if we put on the same performance and keep it high tempo we'll give them a right good game. They'll want to avoid that happening again and they don't want Celtic to catch them but Tynecastle is our home ground and we want to put in a performance and get the three points for the fans."

Taken from the Scotsman