The men in maroon can go eight points clear of the Hoops if they beat the champions at Tynecastle on Sunday
Hearts boss Derek McInnes
Derek McInnes believes high-flying Hearts are “annoying” the hell out of Scottish football with their rip-roaring form.
The Premiership pacesetters lead Celtic by five points as they eye becoming the first non-Old Firm title winners since Aberdeen in 1985.
The Jambos are unbeaten in normal time in 13 games in all competitions this season, with 11 wins and take on the Hoops at Tynecastle on Sunday.
McInnes is revelling in being the top-flight upstarts and reckons it can continue. 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.
“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 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.”
Derek McInnes during Hearts’ win over KIlmarnock(Image: SNS Group)
Speaking to talkSPORT, the Hearts head coach added: “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.
“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.”