Robbie Neilson says Hearts need to be patient in Europa League tie
The Jambos take on Birkirkara on Thursday.
Hearts head coach Robbie Neilson knows patience will be the key for their return leg against Birkirkara.
The Maltese side were content to sit in during last week's goalless draw and Neilson expects the same again in Thursday's Europa League encounter at Tynecastle.
With a third qualifying-round clash against Russian side Krasnodar on offer for the winners, Neilson said: I think they will come and sit in and try to stifle us. It's up to us to try and break them down.
We're at home, the pitch will be good, the weather is good, we will have a really good crowd. So it's down to us to go and win the game.
We need to understand that some of these games are slightly different to Scottish games.
These teams are used to sitting in and just grinding it out and making things very difficult. It's part of football, we have to try to break them down.''
United States international Perry Kitchen is struggling to make the game after picking up a hamstring injury in Malta but Neilson is happy with his central midfield cover despite allowing Morgaro Gomis to depart for Malaysia last week.
It's not an area I need to strengthen,'' he said.
Central midfield we are pretty strong with (Don) Cowie, (Prince) Buaben, Kitchen, (Arnaud) Djoum and Angus Beith ready to come back pretty soon.''
Neilson is looking to add in other areas though. He is looking at German defender Marcel Appiah, who most recently played for NEC Nijmegen in Holland, remains in the hunt for s striker and will continue his search for a wide midfielder after loaning Billy King to Inverness.
I have always said I would like to add another wide player,'' Neilson added.
It's something we are looking at at the minute and we are trying to get a couple of things done.
We are not in a hurry to do it, we have good players in that department but we could do with one more. It's important that the one that comes in is real quality.''