Hearts identify key period after chats with players as club prepare for a potentially-pivotal March

Hearts can go a long way towards a successful season by gaining results during March, with manager Robbie Neilson admitting that a key period lies ahead for his team.

St Johnstone visit Tynecastle Park in the Premiership this weekend before Hearts travel to Celtic the following Wednesday. Then the Glasgow club head to Gorgie for the Scottish Cup quarter-final on Saturday, March 11, a week before Neilson’s side face Aberdeen at Pittodrie.

Those four games precede an international break which will allow time to take stock and prepare for the final part of the campaign. Hearts are currently third in the table with a five-point advantage over fourth-placed Hibs. They hope to make progress in both league and cup during the coming weeks.

“The next four games are big – St Johnstone at home, Celtic back-to-back, then Aberdeen away before the international break. It's a big period coming up,” Neilson told the Evening News. “The players trained last week, they will got a couple of days off and then it's the build-up to the game this weekend.

“We had a free weekend there but we just want to keep playing. We were disappointed with the result at Fir Park last weekend, but we need to look at it in isolation a little bit as well. The boys have been outstanding for ten or 12 games on the bounce. We just need to get ourselves back going again.”

Neilson is aware that some people lost some perspective after the 2-0 defeat to Motherwell. “That's just what happens when you're at a big club. You are expected to win every game,” he said. “We dominated the early part of the game at Motherwell but then stopped doing what we are good at. We stopped being direct with our play and stopped doing the things that have got us to this point. Ultimately, we paid the price.”

Talks have taken place with players at Riccarton in an attempt to iron out issues from that match. “Now we look at it and say: 'What are we good at? What did we not do that we normally do? There are a couple of things we need to improve and we have spoken to the players about it.”