Blair Spittal sees the international break as a chance for Heart of Midlothian to press the reset button on a sorry start to the season.

The 28-year-old summer recruit from Motherwell made his second consecutive start in Sunday’s 1-0 defeat against his former side Dundee United. The Jambos are on their way to a historically bad run after kicking off the season with no wins from their first seven matches, losing the last six.

The two-week break may well give Hearts a chance to come back stronger after increased time on the training pitch – and following a busy schedule – but it doesn’t get any easier when the domestic football restarts.

A trip to face Celtic, who have scored 12 goals without conceding in a 100 per cent start, is next followed by St Mirren in Paisley the week after.

Sunday’s defeat at Tynecastle followed a familiar pattern to the season so far: nice up until the final third but failing to create enough. At the other end, they lose the game through a sloppy goal.

"It's pretty frustrating,” said Spittal. “I thought we actually started the first half OK, in terms of our energy levels were there. We pressed them quite well, got into some decent areas without really creating too much, but it’s really, really frustrating. As you can probably tell.

“We've got an international break now, we can go and reset and make sure that we're ready to go when we come back.

"For whatever reason things aren't clicking at the minute. But, we've got belief there, that we've got a good enough squad that we can turn this around. It's just a case of going into games working as hard as we possibly can. It's the only way it's going to turn. It's just really frustrating."

That frustration was shared by those in the stands who made their feelings known as they streamed out of the stadium after watching another disappointing 90 minutes.

If any solace can be found, it is that Hearts have the experience of last season’s turnaround under Steven Naismith to call upon.

That may well be the only silver lining for the cloud that is building above Tynecastle at the moment.

On the reaction of the fans, Spittal added: "I think it's justified. The expectation at this club is to win games and we've not done that so far. The fans are within their rights to show their frustrations. We get that as players. We take responsibility for that but it's only us that can turn this around.

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“We've got a chance with the international break to reset, see where things have gone wrong and make sure we come back in a better shape.

"It's not been great, but the only ones that are going to get ourselves out of this position is us. In the changing room, it's important in these periods that you stick together and make sure you're doing the right things.

"I don't think there'll be much rest, to be honest. We've got an opportunity to go work on things that haven't been working for us in games, so far. Make sure that we make things better and that's what we aim to do.

"It's just that final bit just now that's not clicking for us. Whether that's down to lack of confidence or what, it's been a difficult spell for us, difficult results that we've picked up.

"I've been in that position before where on both sides where you get yourselves out of the rut, and the only way you're going to do it is by working hard on the training pitch. But, tactically, I think we need to get ourselves into a better shape, whether that's when we lose the ball.

"We look a wee bit fragile at the minute, but [we need to] make sure first and foremost that we're hard to beat.

"The games don't get easier, so we just need to make sure we work hard."