The noise levels have faded from Derek McInnes’ Hearts in recent weeks, and it coincides with them dropping more points in the Premiership.
Whilst Martin O’Neill has won all of his league games in interim charge of Celtic, the Premiership leaders are starting to feel the heat, as they proved at Fir Park on Saturday afternoon.
McInnes’ side were held to a goalless draw against in-form Motherwell, who, despite playing in midweek during their win against Hibernian, proved to be the better team against Hearts.
With Celtic facing Hibernian on Sunday afternoon at Easter Road, it’s going to be interesting to see who Hearts fans will be cheering for, because they are going to need a favour from their bitter rivals.
Photo by Steve Welsh/Getty ImagesDerek McInnes’ reaction to Hearts’ goalless draw at Motherwell
Speaking to BBC Sport, McInnes didn’t complain about the result, as he thinks it was ‘fair’, but he was ‘annoyed’ his players didn’t take their second-half chances.
What’s interesting is that the Hearts boss stated ‘we’ll take a point’, despite the fact that the champions of Scotland can now leapfrog the leaders if they win their two games in hand.
“Motherwell had slightly the better of the first half,” said McInnes. “We had some good moments on the break, but we were wasteful.
“I wanted us to be a bit more positive, and we spoke about that at half-time. We kept them away from our door for a half-hour period, and I’m annoyed we’ve not capitalised on that. For the last 15 minutes, we stopped doing what we were doing and took a step back.
“Over the course of the piece, I think a point was enough and fair. We didn’t do enough to win it, and that’s frustrating. We’ll take the point.”
Poll: Will Celtic win the league? McInnes happy with Hearts despite Celtic closing in
Nobody is going to deny that Hearts deserved to beat Celtic at the end of October, but since then, it’s been dropped points after dropped points for the Jambos.
That’s four games Hearts have failed to win, but from the perspective of McInnes, he thinks his players are ‘returning a good points tally.’
“We weren’t getting too high when we were winning,” added McInnes.
“We’re returning a good points tally at the minute. We just need to get back to showing that attacking threat. We feel we’ve got the answers in the building.”
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