Hearts reveal their plan for the international break with players missing

Hearts intend to work on fitness and match practice during international fortnight to ready players for the final seven Premiership games. Sitting three points clear atop the William Hill Premiership, the Tynecastle side have a specific schedule for the next two weeks as they prepare to visit Livingston a week on Sunday.

Captain Lawrence Shankland and midfielder Cammy Devlin returned from injury during Saturday’s 1-0 home win against Dundee. Devlin made the starting line-up and Shankland featured as a substitute after both players missed two months through injury. They will work to get fitter during this week and next.

Coaching staff will also try to replicate a match scenario to give fringe players much-needed practice of game-specific situations. An 11 v 11 training match will take place at Riccarton involving all of Hearts’ fit first-team players. Landry Kabore is absent because of international duty with Burkina Faso, likewise Islam Chesnokov with Kazakhstan. Everyone else fit and available will be included.

”A couple of lads are away on international duty with their countries,” said the Hearts head coach Derek McInnes. “We'll have an 11 v 11 amongst ourselves and make it a kind of match-like as best we can, rather than just putting 11 out and then the others train. We just thought there are a lot of boys needing some 11 v 11 work so we'll have a practice game amongst ourselves. Although later on in the week some of them will get a break from the Oriam [training complex], they'll have some work to do so the work will be ticked.”

McInnes is hopeful that Tomas Magnusson, Harry Milne, Craig Halkett, Stuart Findlay and Stephen Kingsley could all be available again for the Livingston match. All five were missing against Dundee. “The injured boys have got a big week ahead of them. I'd like to get as many of those injured players out of that treatment room and onto the training pitch by the time we have a full week's work next week on Monday, and hopefully that's the case,” said McInnes.

Shankland influenced a strong second-half Hearts performance last weekend following a hamstring complaint. Physios told McInnes he could not play a full 90 minutes and he will work over the next fortnight to play a bigger part against Livingston. “Obviously, he'll come in and do a few days' work next week,” explained McInnes. “We obviously need to be mindful that he's just back and we can't overplay him at this moment in time.

“The hope would be that, by the time we play Livingston, he's had enough training minutes, enough gym days, enough rest days, because he's working his backside off - him and Cammy, to be honest - to get to the position where they could run about [on Saturday]. So they'll get some days off at the back end of the week, but at the same time, it was so important that we got them back on the pitch on Saturday for loads of reasons.

“The ovation they got, the way the fans feel about Lawrence is the way we all feel about him. He is just going to be so important for us in the run-in. When we play Livingston, hopefully I get the thumbs up from the medical team that he can start games and he can start looking at 60–75 minutes rather than 35 minutes.

“I'm encouraged that we've got good players to come back. I'm encouraged that we've come through a period that we're still going to be top of the league. If somebody had said to me that we'd still be top of the league despite all the challenges we've had, we'd have to grab that and take any sort of lead.

“We're aware that we're up against two heavyweights. We're up against the best manager in the league, Martin O'Neill, his experience and his know-how and everything that Celtic have got under their belt. Rangers have spent a huge amount of money to put that squad together and they're clearly talented players, so we're up against that, but I'm confident we've got the best record against any of the top six teams.

“Our record stands out alone so I've got loads of encouragement from that. We're not looking too far ahead of ourselves. We've got Livingston and that needs our full attention but I certainly think that Hearts fans will fill Livingston’s stadium. The belief, if it had been dented by probably quite a few after last week at Kilmarnock, and I understand it, hopefully there's a bit more belief coming back.”