Robbie Neilson has revealed he has spoken to Celtic and Rangers about recent European experiences as he gets set to take his Hearts side to Switzerland.
The Jambos kick off their European adventure this week, with a guaranteed eight games between now and Christmas. FC Zurich are the opponents who stand in the way of the capital club reaching the Europa League group stages, with the back up guarantee of the Europa Conference League proper already in the bag. In previous times, clubs would fly over and train at the stadium of the opposition and take on media duties. But that can have consequences on the schedule ahead of a big game. So after speaking to the Old Firm clubs, Hearts will train at Riccarton before jetting out for Thursday's first league meeting.
Neilson says it is more a physical than tactical call as he opened up on coming to the decision. He told Edinburgh Evening News: “I spoke to a couple of guys at the Old Firm teams about their experiences of these European games. Previously, what has always been done is that you would fly over, train at the stadium and do media.
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“Nowadays you have a lot of media to do so the manager and a couple of players can miss the start of training sometimes. The team is training about eight o’clock at night having travelled all day. Then they get showered, they aren’t getting dinner till half past ten and maybe not getting to sleep until half past 12 or one o’clock.
“We felt we wanted to train here first and then travel. We will fly over, get to the stadium, do the media and have a walk around. Then we can go to bed because the players will have eaten beforehand. It’s more a physical preparation than tactical.”
On the test that FC Zurich will provide, he continued: “It’s a different game, it’s more like playing against Celtic or Rangers.
"We need to be tactically set up and look at where the threat is. I enjoy coaching against these teams because it’s different and you can set your team up. All eyes were on Sunday’s game against Dundee United but now they shift to Zurich.
“The analysts have been looking at them, as have my assistants Gordon Forrest and Lee McCulloch. I’ve been trying to focus more on Dundee United but now we are watching Zurich’s games to get ourselves ready.”
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