In fairness to Barry, he was talking about Naismith being sacked, at which point Naismith will not have had a huge amount of time on the training pitch. I think he probably has a point. The main/only reason for hearts' poor run of form is that the guy who scores every single one of their goals wasn't scoring goals. It wouldn't surprise me if a new manager came in, and by coincidence (rather than good management) Shankland started scoring again. That'll instantly make them a better team, gaining points. That could easily have happened under Naismith. Without the time on the training pitch, it will be difficult to implement anything other than "give it to the guy who scores goals" and get it working, as Naismith found out. Of course, he could be just using that excuse to back up his own failure to change tactics in the first half of last season.
Totally agree about Devlin's pass, it was actually well played. There was no movement from midfield for once, and Keskinen offered the run (take note, Morris). He hit it as long as he could so that the defender had to stretch for it, which made him fuck it up (of course, he should have comfortably done better). It was a good direct ball, not done under pressure, after decent passing and movement from defence and keeper to give him time to make the pass. As you say, something we didn't see under Robson.