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Neilson Looking To Kick On

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Head coach Robbie Neilson has said that he believes that the Hearts squad will have come through a difficult September stronger than ever before.

Speaking to the Official Site ahead of the game against Kilmarnock, the gaffer explained that defeats to Hamilton, Inverness and Aberdeen had put a dampener on things and our flying start to the season, but it had all been a useful learning curve that could only make us better in the future.

He felt with a scoreless draw against Celtic, the team had showed they had learned.

‘The game at Killie in the Cup got us back on the right track. We then got a good result at Celtic and hopefully we can kick on and pick up three points tomorrow. September was always going to be a really difficult period, but we now move into games where we hope we can pick up more points.’

With defensive positives from the Celtic match especially, Neilson went on to say that he felt a settled backline now had started reaping rewards for us and giving us a good foundation to build from.

‘We`ve now got a back four that`s been playing with each other for a while now. Granted, Ozturk is carrying a bit of an injury, but overall our defenders are becoming more familiar with each other. Saturday will be another tough test and as we learned in the Cup, Killie like to get balls into the box from wide areas. We showed against Celtic, however, that we`re capable of dealing with that.’

Following the Hamilton match, Neilson was ‘considered’ to have breached Disciplinary Rule 72 and yesterday a Disciplinary Tribunal met in accordance with the Judicial Panel Protocol to discuss the matter.

The panel found in favour of the Compliance Officer and Robbie has been handed a two match suspension but it is suspended and will only come into effect should he make a secondary breach of Rule 72 during 2015-16.

With the gaffer talking about defensive strength, Blazej Augustyn was also interviewed ahead of the game, and he was equally confident that Hearts could build on our showing against Celtic.

Having returned to full fitness following injury himself, he was delighted with his current run of games on a personal level.

‘I`ve come through three games in a week and I feel good, so I`m looking forward to getting more games under my belt. It`s been a tough recovery, it always is when you come back from injuries.’

Discussing the game against Kilmarnock tomorrow, and looking back to his 90 minutes against Celtic he added.

‘We`re working hard to improve defensively and follow the coach`s instructions. Celtic was such a hard game, I was so tired after that. The first half was a test, I made some mistakes but we didn`t lose a goal and that is the most important thing. We have to stay positive now and take confidence from the clean sheet at Celtic Park. We want to win every game, but our only focus now is on winning against Kilmarnock tomorrow.’

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