Jorge Grant admits Hearts cannot afford to be “intimidated” at Celtic Park on Wednesday night.
The Jambos travel to Parkhead for the first of a double-header against Ange Postecoglou’s relentless Hoops side, the cinch Premiership encounter coming before the Scottish Cup quarter-final clash at Tynecastle on Saturday.
The Viaplay Cup winners are nine points clear of Old Firm rivals Rangers at the top of the table and have only been beaten by one Scottish club this season – St Mirren – whom they thrashed 5-1 in Paisley on Sunday.
Hearts midfielder Grant, who signed from Peterborough last summer, assessed his side’s task in Glasgow and said: “They are top quality players, you can see there are international players in there as well.
“At times they have been really good to watch this season but it is important that we don’t get intimidated by who they are and the club itself and we go there and try our best to get three points.
“First of all we have to be totally focused.
“We have to be concentrated 100 per cent of the game otherwise if you slip for one moment you can see that they can definitely take a goal.
“It is important that we don’t let them do that.
“I feel we have to be solid defensively but we also have to play our game. We have to implement what we bring to the table on Wednesday.”
Hearts are the only side to score three times against Celtic in domestic competition this season but it was in a 4-3 league defeat at Tynecastle in October.
Grant will take the positives from that day as he focuses solely on Wednesday’s league game and not the upcoming cup tie.
He said: “Of course you have to look at that and see that we have scored three goals against them.
“Scoring three goals at home and not winning the game is not normal.
“So definitely, if we can implement what we do at home away from home as well then that will be good.
“The priority is Wednesday. We can concentrate on the other game once that is out of the way. We have to concentrate on Wednesday.
“If you start to look ahead too much then you start thinking about those games and not the one in front of you, so it is important that we focus totally on Wednesday.”
