'Annoying' Hearts set out Christmas stance as talk of challenging Celtic and Rangers intensifies

Hearts head coach Derek McInnes feels his free-wheeling team is currently “annoying” many within Scottish football with their stunning start to the season - and he hopes to continue doing so for the rest of the campaign.

Hearts currently lead the Scottish Premiership by five points after winning seven and drawing one of their first eight games. The Jam Tarts are unbeaten in normal time in 13 games in all competitions this season, with 11 victories, and have excelled since McInnes took over as manager from Neil Critchley at the start of the summer.

The Gorgie boss is working with ambitious Brighton owner Tony Bloom, who has invested almost £10million in the Tynecastle club, which has access to his Jamestown Analytics company to drive recruitment, and the partnership is paying off.

Hearts head coach Derek McInnes currently has his team top of the table. | SNS Group

Signings such as Greek winger Alexandros Kyziridis, who came in from Slovakian side Zemplín Michalovce, and Portuguese striker Claudio Braga, who joined from Norwegian second-tier outfit Aalesunds, have impressed alongside experienced Scottish football recruits such as Stuart Findlay.

Hearts go into Sunday’s top-of-the-table clash with Celtic at Tynecastle with a healthy advantage over the second-placed defending champions, while Rangers - who are languishing in sixth place - trail the capital club by 13 points.

There has not been a top-flight title winner in Scotland outside the Old Firm since Sir Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen in 1985 and, asked if the possibility of ending the Glasgow duopoly was on, McInnes said: “I’d feel more comfortable to answer that type of question around Christmas and January. At a minute, the only thing that’s on is us being off to a strong start and can we maintain it.

“There’s so many people out there who are desperate for us to fail. I think guys like yourself, the media and a lot of other people from outwith would love to see a challenger try and break that monopoly and I get that, but equally every club we play against now are the club that is desperate to stop us.

Rangers and Celtic ‘will get a bit annoyed’

“Rangers and Celtic and everybody else, they’ll start to get a wee bit annoyed with us if we keep winning games and I do think we’re annoying people at the minute and hopefully we can keep doing that.

“I always believe that there’s a chance that a club outwith Rangers and Celtic can have that special season. Now, whether it’s Hearts, whether it’s other clubs that can achieve that, you’ve always got to try and work towards that. We have had a strong start, but the season is in this infancy, we’re only eight games down.

“I’m not trying to downplay it, but there’s got to be a reality here that, whether you’ve played poorly or whether you’ve started the season as well as we have, I think it will be after the first couple of rounds of games, that’s around Christmas and new year, that you start to get idea of where everybody’s at.

“The teams that are fighting relegation, the teams that are fighting for Europe and the teams that are fighting for the title. We are just trying to keep our head down, work hard and improve as we go along.

McInnes added in an interview with talkSPORT: “If we can continue to improve day to day and improve our performances, then of course we feel there’s more wins in us than not. But there’s also defeats in us and a belt in the mouth around the corner if we don’t do our work and so we just have to try to keep doing our job well.”