Exclusive:Derek McInnes admits Hearts face a four-team title race after Rangers and Celtic opportunity
The Scottish Premiership leaders are preparing for Kilmarnock
Derek McInnes acknowledged today that Hearts are leading a four-way Premiership title race following results at the weekend. The Edinburgh club are six points clear of second-placed Rangers, with third-placed Celtic two points further behind. Motherwell sit just two points adrift of Celtic, who play their game in hand at Aberdeen this evening.
With nine rounds of fixtures remaining, Hearts are in a strong position to claim their first Scottish league title since 1960. McInnes and his coaching staff will take nothing for granted, however the Tynecastle manager did acknowledge that last weekend worked out in favour of Hearts and Motherwell. Both clubs won their games on Saturday against Aberdeen and Dundee United respectively, while Rangers and Celtic drew 2-2 at Ibrox on Sunday.
The Glasgow clubs therefore missed an opportunity to close in on Hearts and now have Motherwell closing in behind them. Should the North Lanarkshire club win their next two Premiership fixtures - away to Dundee and Celtic - they will climb to second in the table before Rangers next play a league match. That is at St Mirren on 15 March.
McInnes is determined Hearts should focus only on themselves. They do not play this weekend due to Scottish Cup quarter-finals and are currently preparing for the trip to Kilmarnock a week on Saturday. After beating Hibs, Falkirk and Aberdeen 1-0 in three of their last four games, they are in good form for the title run-in.
“There's no doubt about it, there are four teams in the race. I think you've got to include Motherwell at this moment in time,” McInnes said, speaking exclusively to the Edinburgh News. “Ourselves and Motherwell won on Saturday and then we were looking forward to watching the game at Ibrox on Sunday. My take from the game was that we saw Rangers' capabilities because they were so strong in the first half, then we saw Celtic so strong in the second half. There is still a recognition that both teams have got real quality. The actual outcome was obviously good for ourselves and Motherwell.
“I met all our lads at Craig Gordon's testimonial on Sunday night. It was a good turnout and we all had a brief chat about things. It was probably the result we were all looking for that day, but I think in general everybody has got to realise it's what we do and not what others do that will determine what happens.
“It's important we stay focused, switched on and calm with what we're doing. We've got to this stage by just doing that. We've navigated ourselves to where we are in the league with nine games to go and we can't really start to think or act any differently now. We have to keep concentrating on our jobs. My job is to concentrate on who is fit and available and, if we can get more players back, that's only going to be a benefit to us.”
The narrow scoreline against Aberdeen did not illustrate the extent of Hearts’ dominance in the match. They finished with 22 shots at goal, seven of which were on target, while the visitors managed five attempts and none on target. “We were really pleased with the performance on Saturday. I think the win is the most important thing but, as a staff, we were really pleased with how the team performed. Everybody played their part,” said McInnes.
“We had some really strong performers and that pleases me. We would liked to have scored more goals but the performance is the biggest indicator of us trying to win games. You won't always win games by playing well, sometimes decisions can go for you or against you, but I actually thought our performance was strong.
“It pleased me particularly because we had so many players missing. It's good for me to see people like Michael Steinwender playing as well as he did. Jamie McCart came in and did just as well, Blair Spittal carried on his good performance from the Falkirk game, Landry Kabore came in and had a big impact.
“It wasn't an easy decision leaving Islam Chesnokov out after he scored the winner last week. The change of shape gave us what we felt was the right shape to play against Aberdeen because we wanted to go with two strikers. Sometimes you take a bit of a chance with your team selection and you hope for the right outcome, so we were pretty pleased that we managed to get a lot right in the game. That was the biggest thing.”