McInnes’ calmness does not just extend to transfers, but also the knowledge his team deserve to be where they are.<\/p>\n
There is no obvious data pointing to over-performance, or a sense of luck.<\/p>\n
Hearts have won the most games, scored the most goals, and have the best goal difference.<\/p>\n
They have the best home record, the best away record, and the league’s top scorer Lawrence Shankland, who McInnes described as the “best striker in the league”.<\/p>\n
Alexandros Kyziridis has the joint-most assists in the Premiership, and Hearts are the biggest threat from set-pieces in the division as well.<\/p>\n
They have beaten Celtic and Rangers twice each. <\/p>\n
Given the relative weakness of the Old Firm, plus the strength of Motherwell and Hibernian as well, a points total below 80 could conceivably be enough to win the Premiership.<\/p>\n
McInnes himself took Aberdeen beyond the 70-point mark consistently while at Aberdeen. It is no wonder the Hearts manager is content.<\/p>\n
Who knows how this engrossing season will turn out, but the belief and confidence in Hearts up to this point has been fully justified.<\/p>\n
“I want us to meet the expectations of the support here and in time exceed those expectations,” McInnes said.<\/p>\n
“Now we’re probably exceeding [those] where we are at the minute. But we’re comfortable with it. I don’t think there’s anybody at Hearts uncomfortable with where we are.<\/p>\n
“We’re exactly where we want to be. We’ve been top of the league now for over three months.<\/p>\n
“This isn’t just a little run of form. It isn’t just a little spell. It’s something more than that. Something substantial there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McInnes’ calmness does not just extend to transfers, but also the knowledge his team deserve to be where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-358952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358952","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=358952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}