Steven Naismith says Hearts will immediately begin their research on potential opponents Plzen of Czech Republic or Kryvbas of Ukraine following Monday’s Europa League play-off draw.
The Czech’s have the European experience, whereas Kryvbas are perhaps less of a household name in European football, but the head coach admits whoever the men in maroon face will provide a tough challenge.
“It's two different teams,” Naismith told Hearts TV.
“Plzen have the experience. Last year they did really well, and they’ve been in the Champions League recently, so they’ve got that experience. Kryvbas are probably less known. We know little about them, they weren’t founded many years ago, but they’ll be tough games.
“From now until the games, we’ll do all we can to research them and put a game plan together to get through the tie. There’s an excitement because we’ve worked so hard to get here and now we know the draw, we’re happy with it and we’ll see if we can get through it.
“We’ll research their style, what they like to do and their individual players. If we can watch them, we’ll get them watched. We’re quite big on that, the detail we like to to go into and that’ll be no different.
“They have this round to get through, so we’ll get a look at the two teams in that, but we’d like to do a bit more than that. I say it all the time, every game is different, we’ll plan like we do for every game and work out what their style is and what they’re main threats are, then identify the areas that we think we can hurt them in.”
The Jambos head into Europe for a third consecutive season and Naismith is hopeful that the current squad can call on previous experience to help them through the various challenges that European football poses.
“That’s important,” Naismith said, when asked about the squad having now experienced European football. “You can’t really get it, other than being in it. The more you’re in it, the more comfortable you are in it and the more you understand the demand of it.
“We can highlight areas, like the travel, the turnaround and the mentality. Everyone is up for the European games because they’re different. They’re midweek, with full houses and the travel. The intrigue is there.
“It’s the following fixtures we need to identify that we need to be on it because that’ll be tough.”
