SPFL Premiership is on a break until next weekend

Hearts intend to improve the fitness of several players during the current international break. The club’s next William Hill Premiership fixture is a week on Sunday against Aberdeen at Pittodrie, and head coach Derek McInnes hopes a few players will be fitter and sharper.

Craig Halkett is suspended and Beni Baningime injured, so McInnes will need to utilise his squad in the coming games. Centre-back Frankie Kent is just back from more than two months out, while others like defender Jamie McCart, midfielders Eduardo Ageu and Blair Spittal, plus wingers Alan Forrest and Sabah Kerjota, are short of competitive match practice.

Hearts players Craig Gordon and Lawrence Shankland are currently with the Scotland squad in Turkiye preparing for World Cup qualifiers against Greece and Denmark. Cammy Devlin is with Australia and Landry Kabore has joined up with Burkina Faso. All four will report back to Riccarton in the middle of next week.

By then, McInnes hopes others will have benefited from some intense training. “Obviously, we've got a few lads going away. We'll try to step up the work with some of them,” he said. “Ageu will need a good chance to use that fortnight now. And once we get the players back, I think Craigy and Lawrence will come back from Scotland and they'll be here with us on the Wednesday. Then the other lads will travel back on Wednesday and we'll get them with us for a few days before we go to Aberdeen.”

Brazilian midfielder Ageu may well step into the team in place of Baningime if he is deemed ready after his own injury issues. “We just need to accelerate his work,” said McInnes. “I think the boy is coming from a long way back. He didn’t have a real pre-season before he came to us, and then it’s been stop-start with his injury. He hasn’t not played a proper game, so sometimes you've just got to keep playing him and get him up to speed. I think his work between now and Pittodrie will be important. I do think he's got the quality and the calmness of play that can help us in there.”

Forward Claudio Braga will continue to be an important figure after winning Premiership Player of the Month for October. The Portuguese scored three goals in his four Hearts appearances during the month and was named top player in the division by the Scottish Professional Football League.

Hearts extended their unbeaten run in the top flight into November as they remain top of the table. Braga struck twice in the Edinburgh club’s 3-0 win against Kilmarnock at Rugby Park, and then claimed another goal in the 2-2 draw with St Mirren. Those goals helped earn him his first accolade since joining Hearts during the summer in a £430,000 transfer from Norwegian side Aalesunds FK.

Braga is the Premiership’s second top goalscorer with six, one behind his Tynecastle team-mate Shankland. In all competitions, he has scored nine times in 17 appearances since arriving in Gorgie and is already a popular figure among supporters. Shankland won September’s Premiership Player of the Month, whilst McInnes has won all three Premiership Manager of the Month awards so far this season.