Robbie Neilson admits he’s spoken with Celtic about their European experiences as Hearts decided to turn down the opportunity to train in Switzerland the day before the match.

The Jambos kick off their European adventure on Thursday night against FC Zurich with a spot in the Europa League group stages up for grabs. They are already guaranteed a spot in the Europa Conference League after an impressive Scottish Premiership campaign last term. 

Hearts have snubbed the traditional training session 24 hours before the match and will instead train at Riccarton on Wednesday morning before flying to St Gallen to face the Swiss champions.

However, Neilson insists that it is more of a physical than tactical decision.

“I spoke to a couple of guys at Celtic and Rangers about their experiences of these European games," he told the Edinburgh Evening News. "Previously, what has always been done is that you would fly over, train at the stadium and do media.

“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 10 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.”