On 41 minutes, he stole possession from Falkirk’s Henry Cartwright 30 yards out and stepped forward before unleashing an unstoppable low drive past goalie Scott Bain.

After Alexandros Kyziridis’ amazing 25-yard opening goal, Hearts led 2-0 at halftime. They went on to win 3-0, with defender Craig Halkett adding another goal early in the second half.

Shankland scored his sixth goal in ten competitive games for Hearts this season. He arrived in Edinburgh in the summer of 2022, scoring 28 club goals in his debut season and 31 the following year.

The 30-year-old scored only nine goals last season, but he has been in good form this season as Hearts compete for the Premiership title.

Saturday’s victory put them two points ahead of Celtic, who drew 0-0 with Hibernian in Glasgow. “Obviously, the quality of the first two goals was outstanding, but I thought it was such a dominant first-half performance,” Hearts head coach Derek McInnes stated. “I think we deserved to be two goals up.

I believe we missed opportunities to end the game before halftime. We talked at halftime about attempting to get the next goal. I watched Falkirk play Hibernian the other night.

They get a goal back, they never give up, and they have an incredible energy. We did want to encourage them, so we talked about attempting to reach the next goal as quickly as possible. I thought we came out of the second half quite well as well.

Halkett delivers an excellent header. Then we had the luxury of making substitutions and keeping the players in mind in order to get some minutes on the pitch and care for one or two, such as [Oisin] McEntee, who has been dealing with a foot ailment.

“Disruptions sometimes have an impact on teams, but I thought we were fine. We still had decent chances in the second half, however I believe Falkirk kept going.

When you don’t put that pressure on Falkirk, and we didn’t always get the press in the last 15 minutes, they can work their way up the pitch.

I thought we were deserving victors. I thought that was an excellent performance. I learnt a lot about how we constructed the game, which was exactly what I was looking for.

We shifted the play and moved forward. We ran forward, bodies in the box, crosses – more like the heart performance I had hoped for when we originally arrived.

“It’s a good sign for us that we can do it and hopefully improve as we go.” I assumed we dealt with Falkirk with the expectation that we would pursue them. Falkirk plays a lot of long balls up to strikers.

I thought we dealt with it very severely, man for man. I thought we were busy and capable of picking up the second ball.

We dealt with that immediate threat, as well as several times in the second half when Calvin Miller used his speed to get in on that side. When you put on a heavy press and go after teams, there is some risk and reward involved.

In my opinion, this was an excellent performance. I think we had some terrific individual performances in there, and it was nice to earn a win and a clean sheet.”

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