![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0_JS384546463.jpg\")
Hearts boss Derek McInnes<\/p>\nThe men in maroon can go eight points clear of the Hoops if they beat the champions at Tynecastle on SundayHearts boss Derek McInnes<\/p>\n
Derek McInnes believes high-flying Hearts are \u201cannoying\u201d the hell out of Scottish football<\/a> with their rip-roaring form.<\/p>\n The Premiership<\/a> pacesetters lead Celtic by five points as they eye becoming the first non-Old Firm title winners since Aberdeen<\/a> in 1985.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, McInnes said: \u201cI\u2019d feel more comfortable to answer that type of question around Christmas and January.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a minute, the only thing that\u2019s on is us being off to a strong start and can we maintain it. There\u2019s so many people out there who are desperate for us to fail.<\/p>\n \u201cGuys 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.<\/p>\n \u201cRangers and Celtic<\/a> and everybody else, they\u2019ll start to get a wee bit annoyed with us if we keep winning games and I do think we\u2019re annoying people at the minute and hopefully we can keep doing that.<\/p>\n \u201cI always believe that there\u2019s a chance that a club outwith Rangers and Celtic can have that special season. Now, whether it\u2019s Hearts, whether it\u2019s other clubs that can achieve that, you\u2019ve always got to try and work towards that.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to talkSPORT<\/a>, the Hearts<\/a> head coach added: \u201cWe have had a strong start, but the season is in this infancy, we\u2019re only eight games down.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not trying to downplay it, but there\u2019s got to be a reality here that, whether you\u2019ve played poorly or whether you\u2019ve started the season as well as we have, I think it will be after the first couple of rounds of games, that\u2019s around Christmas and new year, that you start to get idea of where everybody\u2019s at.<\/p>\n \u201cThe teams that are fighting relegation, the teams that are fighting for Europe and the teams that are fighting for the title.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are just trying to keep our head down, work hard and improve as we go along.<\/p>\n “If we can continue to improve day to day and improve our performances, then of course we feel there\u2019s more wins in us than not.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there\u2019s also defeats in us and a belt in the mouth around the corner if we don\u2019t do our work and so we just have to try to keep doing our job well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The men in maroon can go eight points clear of the Hoops if they beat the champions at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[13717,2817,63797,218,9531,2714,8058,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-213661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-aberdeen-fc","tag-celtic-fc","tag-derek-mcinnes","tag-football","tag-hearts-fc","tag-rangers-fc","tag-scottish-premiership","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Derek](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0_Kilmarnock-v-Heart-of-Midlothian-William-Hill-Premiership.jpg\")
Derek McInnes during Hearts’ win over KIlmarnock(Image: SNS Group)<\/p>\n