Hearts head coach Robbie Neilson has challenged club captain Alim Ozturk to win his place back after the big Turk was axed against Aberdeen.

The 23-year-old endured a nightmare outing in the Jambos’ 3-2 Betfred Cup defeat against St Johnstone last week, with his sloppy concession of a second-half penalty summing up a ropey display.

He paid the price at Pittodrie as he was relegated to the bench against the Dons, with his teammates claiming a creditable clean-sheet in a 0-0 stalemate.

Now Neilson wants to see his skipper’s determination come to the fore as he attempts to force his way back into the starting XI.

The Jambos boss said: “After losing three goals at McDiarmid Park, we had to do something. You can’t just accept the way it went, so I had to change the back four.

“The ones that played at Aberdeen worked hard and got us a clean sheet, so it’s up to Alim [Ozturk] now to fight to get back in because he’s one of our key players.

“He’s got the right type of character that he will fight to do that. We have a good squad here, so players will come in and out of the team. It shows everyone that you’ve got to fight to get into this team.”

Meanwhile, Neilson is remaining cool despite seeing his team crash out of the Europa League, the Betfred Cup and fail to win either of their opening two league matches of the season.

Ahead of this weekend’s visit of Inverness, the Tynecastle boss said: “We have had a tough start to the season, playing the champions at Tynecastle then going to Perth and Aberdeen in the first week.

"Those are the teams that finished first, second and fourth in the league last season so they are some of the toughest games we could have got.

"We could have done better in these matches but we have got a point at a difficult venue and now we look to build on that against Caley Thistle now.”