Wilson won’t dwell on lower tier Edinburgh derbies

Danny Wilson: Not dwelling on prospect of Championship derbies. Picture: Ian Georgeson

Next season they may even involve playing capital rivals Hibs in the Championship, should Kilmarnock prevail in the final game of the Premiership season proper at Easter Road and then Hibs lose out in the play-offs.

Wilson is unconcerned about Hibs’ fate but does acknowledge the prospect of playing in local derbies next season.

“It does not matter to me if Hibs come down with us or not,” said Wilson. “It does not give me any pride or make me happy.

“We’ve been relegated so we don’t take any joy in potentially them coming down. If they do come down it will be another big team in the league and another big game for us, it’s not something I’m really bothered about.

“The derbies are big games, the fans love them and the players love to be involved in them. If they were to come down that would be one game to look forward to but they’ve still got a game to rescue themselves.”

The Championship will certainly involve Rangers, possibly Hibs, either Hamilton Accies or Falkirk, and maybe even Dunfermline, the latter three clubs all recently in the top flight. So can Hearts win the Championship at the first attempt?

Wilson said: “I’m not going to make any big claims saying we’re going to win it. We would like to think with the size of the club that we would be in the reckoning but it just depends on the summer rebuild and we’ll take it from there.

“I think we’ve got a good group, they’ve got the experience of playing 20, 30 games in a season that they maybe didn’t have at the start of this season.

“It’s difficult to say because that’s going to be a tough league next year. I feel with the players we have that’ll we have a chance.”

Wilson is looking forward to a summer holiday after tomorrow’s encounter with St Mirren in Paisley, even if it has come too soon and spoiled Hearts’ good run.

“We’ve gone on a wee winning run,” said Wilson. “We’re disappointed with the Partick game but we’ll look forward to Saturday and go away for the summer and look to rebuild.

“It will be nice to relax a wee bit but there are a lot of people in a different situation so I just hope that they get their future sorted out as soon as possible.

“We had put a lot into the last few weeks and we got the results, but we were not really at the races against Partick.

“We’ve grown into the season as it’s gone on, you’ve seen players come on leaps and bounds. Sam Nicholson, Dale Carrick; they’ll go on to have good careers and they’ll look back on this season.

“No-one is happy about being relegated but they’ll take the positives out of it. We have made improvements and I think that’s obvious.

“The season is coming to an end just as we were getting going so you maybe want it to keep going. Sadly it’s not going to be like that but we can go away and recharge the batteries.”

BT Sport Q&A: Rangers | Hibs | Neil Lennon

THIS week’s BT Sport video Q&A looks at whether Rangers fans will buy season tickets and if the club’s supporters will force a change of ownership.

The form of Hibs under Terry Butcher is also examined following the Easter Road side’s derby defeat while the future of Neil Lennon is also considered following the announcement that his assistant Johan Mjallby is to depart at the end of the season.

• Email your Scottish football question for the BT Sport panel to answer. The next show will be recorded on May 7 after St Johnstone v Celtic, which will also be shown live on BT Sport, with the video available on The Scotsman website the following day. You can also tweet us @TheScotsman.

A line-up of experts will handle your questions after each BT Sport game. Most match days, the team includes Darrell Currie, Derek Rae and Gary McAllister.

Over this season, BT Sport will air 30 SPFL matches plus 10 Rangers games from the SPFL League One.

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