Hearts keeper Steve Banks has revealed how crunch dressing-room talks are planned on Thursday in a bid to stop their SPL slide.

St Mirren's 1-0 victory at Tynecastle on Boxing Day saw the Gorgie side fall to 10th in the league - just 10 points clear of basement side Gretna.

The home support witnessed the worst performance of the season from their team as they created virtually nothing in attack against a Saints side that won courtesy of Stephen McGinn's 16th-minute strike.

Banks - recalled to the side for the first time since they beat Aberdeen on November 11 - insists the players need to sit down to discuss their predicament after brief talks following their latest loss.

He said: "A few of the senior players in there thought the players needed to have a meeting without any staff there, which we did.

"We will have another meeting on Thursday. There were a few things said that maybe had not been said before."

Assistant head coach Stevie Frail admitted after the game that the club have been dragged into a relegation battle.

And Banks insists the threat of dropping to Scottish football's second tier needs to be taken seriously, even though he believes a club of Hearts' stature deserves better.

"I think we have to start looking over our shoulders at that," he said. "I certainly hope that everyone is well aware of the threat of relegation.

"It's becoming a bit more realistic as time has gone on. I think the club is too good to go down, whether the players are at the moment I don't know. We are not getting the results.

"The club, as far as I'm concerned, deserves to be top of the league and be winning cups every year because it is a great club with a lot of tradition.

"It's just not happening at the moment.

"Not only was it a bad result for us, it was probably one of the worst performances as well. We need to knuckle down and get results and not be too concerned about performances, although it is important to play well.

"We just have to get three points at the end of the 90 minutes and get some confidence back and hopefully the performances will start coming with the wins."

TeamTalk / Eurosport