Hearts head coach Derek McInnes has labelled Sunday’s meeting with Edinburgh rivals Hibernian as their toughest test.<\/p>\n
That might raise a few eyebrows, but you can see why. Hibs dismantled Hearts for 50 minutes at Easter Road in December, storming into a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Hearts scored twice and were pressing for an equaliser by the end, but it was one of their most bruising experiences this season as they seek a first title since 1960.<\/p>\n
Hibs, who are chasing European football for the second straight season, have their own motivations as well as the derby bragging rights and the glee of derailing their rivals’ title tilt.<\/p>\n
Hearts’ away form is also a concern. They have picked up just one point from their last four away from Tynecastle – at bottom side Livingston – which is why Rangers and Celtic have edged closer.<\/p>\n
Given three of their final five games are on the road, that needs to improve.<\/p>\n
Plus, if the Old Firm win, Hearts will find themselves two points behind Rangers and level with Celtic at kick-off, which will present its own psychological challenge.<\/p>\n
When all that is considered, it is easy to see why McInnes thinks it could be his team’s biggest test.<\/p>\n
However, if they win it, the momentum boost could be huge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hearts head coach Derek McInnes has labelled Sunday’s meeting with Edinburgh rivals Hibernian as their toughest test. That…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-548544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548544","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=548544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}