McInnes<\/a>‘ third personal gong of the campaign – he was taking the positives from a season that captured the imagination and vowed to ensure Hearts would be regular challengers.<\/p>\n“In the cold light of day when we look back there\u2019s been so much positivity from where we were at the beginning of the season,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always start a season with hope and expectation and I think we\u2019ve exceeded all of that this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the intention now is to dust ourselves down and try and enjoy our break but be ready for the challenges ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fully believe that those challenges are going to be met, with the enthusiasm from everybody at the club, the desire to improve and go on and try and be the norm for us to be challenging and trying to be competing for trophies on a more regular basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI firmly believe that those expectations will be met as we go on.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think this season\u2019s gave us so much encouragement for us to reach 80 points, be involved in the Champions League qualifiers coming up in July, a club record and so many positives from the campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll look back and enjoy it but we\u2019ll also have that kind of grievance at times and that disappointment to try and spur us on to something greater.\u201d<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0_JS406648549.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Heart of Midlothian manager Derek McInnes with the award for Manager of the Year at the Scottish Football Writers awards event<\/p>\n
While he may not have got his hands on the ultimate prize, the Gorgie club do now have a Champions League qualifier to look forward to.<\/p>\n
It’s the first time Hearts have entered this stage of the competition for 20 years, when AEK Athens dumped them out following an earlier round win over Siroki Brijeg.<\/p>\n
Mounting another title challenge with European football in the mix is not something Hearts had to deal with last term, but McInnes is confident that Jamestown Analytics can help him build a squad capable of fighting on multiple fronts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019ve got a good reference point there in terms of what can be done and obviously it\u2019s your job now to try and put a squad together that helps us meet those challenges,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be more expected of us next season and rightly so, but I do think it will give us even more belief and confidence with what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the team\u2019s played with a real attitude to win this season which really has been demonstrated so often and that pleases me no end and we have to be that and a wee bit more again if we can go and try and lift silverware.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we\u2019ve given enough encouragement to so many other teams of what can be done.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think if your whole club is operating well from top to bottom and we\u2019ve got that at the minute, we\u2019re still not awash with money and we have to use what we\u2019ve got wisely, but I think what we have got is expertise, plenty of enthusiasm and a real desire to drive the club on.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo with all that in the mix then we\u2019re hopeful and confident that we can keep progressing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven saying we have Champions League football to come, it feels brilliant just being involved in that and we\u2019ll look forward to it when it comes around.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important we have a rest over the summer but we also need to be busy and try to help the squad deal with those sort of games and we\u2019ll be determined when the game comes around, the Champions League qualifier, to try and make the most of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean it\u2019s obviously a long way into the Champions League from where we are but we\u2019re in it anyway and we\u2019re in the fight so I think it\u2019ll be exciting for the club when that date comes around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tynecastle boss has spoken for the first time since Saturday’s dramatic final day Premiership defeat to Celtic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,18282,6257,188850,596,188852,113572,9003,85],"class_list":["post-678417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celtic-fc","tag-champions-league","tag-derek-mcinnes","tag-football","tag-hearts-fc","tag-martin-oneill","tag-scottish-premiership","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}