New Hearts duo Sander Kartum and Michael Steinwender could feature at Dundee

Hearts boss Neil Critchley is considering including new signings Sander Kartum and Michael Steinwender in his squad for Saturday’s Premiership trip to Dundee.

Attacking midfielder Kartum and centre-back Steinwender arrived more than a week ago but played no part in last weekend’s win over Kilmarnock as they had not played since December 1 and November 24 respectively due to winter breaks in Norway and Sweden.

Critchley said last weekend they were effectively back in pre-season mode but he has been impressed with the progress the pair have made and is open to the possibility of including them against the Dee.

The need for Steinwender’s involvement in particular may be accelerated by the fact Lewis Neilson and Jamie McCart are the only other centre-back options available as a result of injuries to Frankie Kent, Stephen Kingsley and Craig Halkett and the recent departures of Kye Rowles and Daniel Oyegoke.

“They’re closer, yeah,” Critchley said at his pre-match media briefing on Friday. “That’s a decision I have to make.

“They’ve trained all week. They look better every day and we’ve done some testing with them as well physically to see where they’re at.

“It’s now just getting that decision right or that balance right of are they ready, are they ready to start, do they come in off the bench?”

In addition to Kartum and Steinwender, Hearts have added McCart and striker Elton Kabangu this month and Critchley did not rule out further additions before Monday’s deadline.

“I’m happy with what we’ve done so far,” he said. “We had a plan in place and we wanted to bring in certain players in certain areas of the pitch. I think we’ve done that and I think we’ve strengthened.

“I’m really pleased with the players that we’ve brought in. I think they’re going to make a big difference to us.

“I know we’ve not seen Michael and Sander yet, but you can see their quality in training, so I’m confident that in time they’ll prove that they’re good players for us.

“We’ll see what happens in the next 72 hours. We’re still looking, we’re still searching. If we can strengthen, we will.”

Critchley has guided Hearts from two points adrift at the foot of the table to ninth place, level with Dundee and just three points off the top six since he took charge in October.

After overseeing a six-game unbeaten run ahead of the trip to Dens, the Englishman is eyeing further progress up the table in the months ahead.

“I think we’ve made improvements and we’ve picked up some good points and had some good performances, but I also look at some of the points we’ve left out on the pitch and think it could have been better, we could be higher,” he said with a nod to the concession of a 2-0 lead in stoppage-time at Ross County and a last-gasp penalty miss by Jorge Grant at Aberdeen that cost them victory.

“The performances could have been exactly the same, but in just one or two moments we could have picked up quite a few more points in my opinion. I don’t think we’ve won any game that we were not deserving of winning.

“We’re not where we want to be. There’s a really important period coming up, I’ve said that to the players this week.

“We were unbeaten in January, but now we’re moving on. It’s the next month and we’ve got this game, the Scottish Cup game (away to St Mirren) and we want to just keep improving, keep striving and keep aiming to get as high as we can.”