Craig Levein has said he's not tempted to tinker with his Hearts team for the trip to Dundee ahead of Sunday's League Cup semi-final with Celtic.

The Premiership table-toppers travel to Dens Park to take on the league's bottom side on Tuesday, five days before facing the Hoops at Murrayfield.

Levein, who said he'll speak to Burnley in the next fortnight about extending Jimmy Dunne's loan beyond January, has no plans to "mess about" with his side for the fixture against the Dark Blues, having discovered a winning formula at the offset of this campaign.

Asked if he'll ring the changes, the Jam Tarts boss said: "No, I look at it fairly simply.

"To go into Sunday feeling good we're better having won the game against Dundee than me messing about, trying to be clever.

"I think the game tomorrow night is hugely important, we can only help Sunday by putting in a good performance tomorrow."

Hearts were formidable at Tynecastle last season but saw a poor run of form on the road blot their copybook.

On how he'd looked to remedy his side's travel sickness, Levein said it was as simple as having a better squad of players at his disposal.

"We have better players," he added. "The drop-off from the best players to the next level is very, very small.

"Sometimes, when you have 11 good players and then you get some injuries it can be extremely difficult.

"But I feel that in our squad there's not much difference between our best players and the next group.

"That makes my job a lot easier, when someone drops out and you bring in a player who is chomping at the bit to get going, the motivational part is out of my hands after that.

"Last season a lot of the time I was trying to get everybody up for every match and it felt at times like a struggle. But this season it's not been like that."

Hearts' strong start to the season sees them top of the league and into the last four of the League Cup.

Levein warned that his team haven't achieved anything yet despite the notable progress the club has made on and off the park.

The former Scotland boss continued: "We've not done anything yet.

"Things are going well, the transformation of the club in the last four years is remarkable.

"But we are a football club, we need to win matches and we need to win trophies and be involved in big games to make all that effort worthwhile.

"I'm thrilled with everything that is going on in the academy. We'll see the benefit of that in time but what is important in the manager's job is to win matches week-by-week."