What does that say about the Hearts squad that they have had their Wednesday day off cancelled by manager Paulo Sergio? Nothing to worry about, it is just that Sergio is slowly changing the methods employed by the club to improve the players skills. he did not want to change things dramatically when he arrived as he wanted to assess the players and the methods they were working under before making any decision on changes (if any) were required. With Hearts playing in Europe and on Sundays throughout August, there was not a natural break to introduce his improvements. Last week's international break gave them a bit of a break but the former Sporting Lisbon coach is looking to gradually import more stringent methods from Portugal in a bid to improve his side. Sergio has already had a positive impact, leading Hearts to three consecutive clean sheets, and they will look to follow up a comfortable Edinburgh derby win when they travel to Inverness on Saturday.
Sergio said: "Since we arrived, the first day off was last weekend. With all the SPL games and Europa League games, we didn't have a day off. I know in Scotland you are used to stopping on Wednesday but we stopped that. I believe Wednesday is maybe the best day of the week to work. If you play on Saturday and you have a day off on Sunday, Monday they arrive back at the club to recover. Tuesday, they are used to doing some hard work and they have a day off on Wednesday, they return on Thursday to do something and on Friday they are practising for the game on Saturday, working on free-kicks and corner-kicks. I find it a short week. How do you develop as a player if you don't work, if you don't sleep with the ball? It's hard to improve technically. We want to practise at high intensity because you don't play slowly during a game."
While nobody likes change, the players will have to adapt in the coming months. Sergio went on: "If I was in Portugal, we would also be working one or two afternoons as well. With time I will introduce some afternoon sessions here. We have started working Wednesdays, I don't want to make a huge change because that can have a bad impact on their physical conditions. We are also starting to put in place individual programmes for each player to work in the gym in the afternoon. We made an evaluation last week of each player, so we have scientific values of their balance between muscles and legs."
Sergio is confident his players understand the need for and have embraced the changes. He said: "I think so, I don't have any problem with that. I believe in hard work in my life. Nobody gives you anything, it's through work you achieve your goals. I like to explain my ideas, I don't want to impose them without people understanding why I'm doing these things. I have changed too, I have to adapt to some things. It's reasonable for me to keep some things the same, they have been here for years before me."