Robbie Neilson has revealed he has set Liam Boyce a target of 20 goals for Hearts this season.
The Northern Ireland internationalist took his tally so far to three in three games in the Premier Sports Cup with the opener in Tuesday’s 2-0 victory over Stirling Albion.
The 30-year-old netted 16 times last term as the Jambos bounced back from relegation to the Championship.
And Neilson is convinced the former Ross County marksman can take the top-flight by storm on the club’s return.
He said: “He’s very, very important for us.
“I spoke to Liam at the start of pre-season and just told him we wanted him to score 20 goals this season.
“I think he’ll get chances.
“I thought he could have been more ruthless on Tuesday night; he could have had three or four to be honest with you.
“But it’s great that he was on the score-sheet.”
Meanwhile, Neilson is wary of making too many changes to his side for Sunday’s visit of Inverness Caley Thistle - because he sees it as a dress rehearsal for the Premiership curtain-raiser against Celtic.
The Tynecastle side sealed their qualification for the knock-out stages of the Premier Sports Cup with their third straight victory on Tuesday.
But, with the visit of Celtic just six days later, Neilson is keen to fine tune things for the league.
He said:“The Premier Sports Cup starts early and it’s about being ready for the first league game, which is a massive one for us.
“We’ll make a couple of changes but we’re still using all these games to get ready for Celtic.
“It’s important we get that continuity and understand the system we’re trying to play, and see if Inverness can cause us some problems that we can sort out.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here