Blair Spittal has backed Lawrence Shankland to regain form at Heart of Midlothian – whether he remains at Tynecastle Park next season or not.

Last week, the striker opened up on his contract situation. As it stands, Shankland will not be a Hearts player next season.

Spittal played alongside the Scotland international at Queen’s Park. In fact, he replaced Shankland as a substitute when making his professional debut in 2012.

Shankland has found the net just once so far this season, though his performance overall in recent games have been good. Spittal backs the 29-year-old to rediscover the form that saw him net 59 goals over the previous two seasons.

“It’s something he’s obviously not used to, especially in the last two seasons where he’s been constantly scoring goals,” said Spittal. “But the last couple of weeks his performances have been really good in terms of working the whole backline.

“I’ve played with him before and know what he is capable of. I know he will dust himself down and keep going.

“If he keeps getting into positions it will turn. The last thing you can do is let your head go down and there’s been no signs of that with Lawrence.

On Shankland’s contract situation, Spittal added: “It’s a pretty common occurrence in football: boys running into the last year of their contracts.

“Whatever happens happens and we just need to concentrate on what we’re doing. We have a really busy schedule coming up and those sorts of things will take care of themselves, whenever that is.

“Lawrence’s main focus at the minute is on making sure he’s putting in good performances and getting back on the scoresheet.

“In football these days it’s common for boys to go into the last year of their contracts.

“It’s not affected the changing room or Lawrence.”

Hearts are now preparing for their trip to Belgium to take on Cercle Brugge in the Conference League.

It comes off the back of another match in which Neil Critchley’s men took the game to the opposition but failed to take their chances.

Spittal applies similar logic to that situation as he does to that of Shankland.

“It is frustrating, but we need to keep getting into those positions and it’ll turn,” he said. “The last thing we want to be doing is coming away from games thinking we have to be doing better in terms of creating opportunities.

“We are coming away knowing we are creating, it’s just that we’re not taking enough at the minute.

“There’s little ones like in the second half against Celtic when we hit the bar. And the one where Shanks thinks he is offside so touches it back to Cammy .. it’s one of those unfortunate things that’s not falling for us at the minute.

“But if we keep getting into those positions it’ll turn for us.

“You don’t want to be coming away from games saying we played well in parts but not getting anything from it. In the first half against Celtic we created numerous opportunities and a couple of really good ones.

“The one for myself in the first minutes kind of just bounced up awkwardly. But when you are playing quality sides like Celtic you have to be taking your chances or else you leave yourself susceptible.

“You need a bit of luck as well. Celtic’s first goal, there’s nothing we can really do about it. A good clearance just deflects off their boy and lets Kyogo in on goal.

“It’s hard to take but we just need to focus on the positives.”

A win on Thursday would almost certainly mean qualification from the league phase. A draw should do it too.

Given the convoluted format, it is no surprise that the players are unsure what exactly is needed to progress.

“It’s a bit of a strange situation,” said Spittal. “Everyone is a bit alien to it in that we didn’t know what to expect going into this format.

“The league’s the most important thing for us at the minute and we want to get out of the position we are in.

“But we know if we can keep the performance levels high, the results will come.

“Against Celtic we put in a really good first half performance then it dipped a bit in the second and we got punished. Then you are chasing the game.

“Europe is a chance for us to get away from that. It’s a bit of a fresh approach to games because we don’t know who we are coming up against. Obviously in the league you are playing the same teams three or four times. That’s us played Celtic twice already.

“Hopefully we can catch Cercle Brugge by surprise and get a good result.”

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“It’s been good,” he added. “We started the group with two good results then I wouldn’t say the last one was bad. The performance was there, but there were two moments where Heidenheim punished us. Their first goal was a bit of quality then the second one came when the game had opened up.

“It was as good a performance as we could have put in. We just never got the result.”

This is Spittal’s first real campaign in Europe after a “short-lived experience” with Motherwell two years ago.

Irish outfit Sligo Rovers was a favourable draw for the Steelmen but they went on to lose 3-0 on aggregate.

He is on a mission to make up for it this time round and responded with an excellent performance in the win over Dinamo Minsk, as well as a spectacular strike in the 2-0 victory against Omonia Nicosia.

More than 3,000 Hearts fans will be packed into the away end of the Jan Breydelstadion – a far cry from the empty stands in Azerbaijan for Hearts’ last European adventure.

“We played in Plzen and the fans made themselves heard,” said Spittal. “Then against Minsk it was just strange going back to an atmosphere that had been so frequent for a season when we played with no crowd.

“It was a special night in terms of the way it worked out. But this is something we are looking forward to.

“As a player you dream of playing in Europe and testing yourself against the best. I’ve not had that many opportunities to do that so it’s important we savour it.”