A few eyebrows were raised when McInnes dropped three of his most in-form players to the bench.<\/p>\n
However, despite a sticky start, the subsequent victory – which means Hearts remain the only unbeaten team left in Premiership and unbeaten in 15 going back to last season – was further evidence of their strength in depth.<\/p>\n
Interviewed before kick-off by BBC 5 Live, chief executive Andrew McKinlay said: “We will win the league, but whether it’s this season or not, I don’t know.”<\/p>\n
There were a few question marks after Hearts were fortunate to escape with a draw at St Mirren on Wednesday, but there will be growing belief that it could be this season given they won this at a canter.<\/p>\n
That was despite resting emerging folk hero Braga and two other key players carrying knocks.<\/p>\n
Landry Kabore, who arrived from Estonian club Narva Trans, proved an able deputy as the striker built on last month’s hat-trick for Burkina Faso as McInnes achieved his target of remaining top of the table at the end of the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Shankland has firmly re-established himself as a force up front, his 10th goal in all competitions already surpassing last season’s disappointing total.<\/p>\n
Dundee were the last team to win at Tynecastle 10 games ago, but they never looked like repeating April’s 1-0 victory that would have taken them up to eighth.<\/p>\n
With Livingston’s late goal earning a draw with Hibernian, Pressley’s side are instead left looking nervously behind them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A few eyebrows were raised when McInnes dropped three of his most in-form players to the bench. However,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-238271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238271","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=238271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}