{"id":518658,"date":"2025-10-22T03:49:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T03:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518658\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T03:49:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T03:49:23","slug":"martin-oneill-reacts-to-celtic-hearts-title-talk-after-derek-mcinnes-makes-annoyed-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518658\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin O’Neill reacts to Celtic-Hearts title talk, after Derek McInnes makes ‘annoyed’ claim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What a dour start to the season for Brendan Rodgers and his Celtic side. <\/strong><\/p>\n

You would think Celtic are the champions of Scotland<\/a>, but they are far from showing it, as Hearts are the early leaders<\/a> after eight Premiership matches.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Derek McInnes<\/a>\u2018 men will welcome Celtic<\/a> to Tynecastle knowing that three points will send them eight points clear \u2013 the Hoops have a Europa League game in between. <\/p>\n

Yes, the season will only be nine games old, but it\u2019s still an incredible position to be in, as McInnes and Martin O\u2019Neill<\/a> shared their thoughts. <\/p>\n

\"DerekPhoto by Ian MacNicol\/Getty ImagesDerek McInnes on \u2018annoying\u2019 Celtic and Rangers<\/p>\n

Not since 1985 has a team outside of Glasgow lifted Scottish football\u2019s main crown, so you can understand those who doubt what Hearts can do.<\/p>\n

Speaking on talkSPORT, McInnes tried to play down the title talk, and thinks that the likes of Celtic and Rangers will start to get \u2018annoyed\u2019 if they continue winning. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor us? I\u2019d be more qualified and feel more comfortable answering that type of question around Christmas and January,\u201d said McInnes about winning the title. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt the minute, the only thing that\u2019s on is, we\u2019re off to a strong start. Can we maintain it? There are so many people out there who are desperate for us to fail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think guys like yourself, the media, and a lot of other people from outwith, would love to see a challenger to try and kind of break that monopoly. And I get that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut equally, every club we play against now are the club that\u2019s desperate to stop us. Rangers and Celtic 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill on Celtic-Hearts title talk<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill told talkSPORT that he is \u2018surprised\u2019 that Hearts are sitting at the top of the tree<\/a>, and his former side is struggling.<\/p>\n

But despite there being a lot of noise around a possible title race of different sorts in Scotland, he also wanted to cool things down. <\/p>\n

\u201cListen, we\u2019re eight games into the season,\u201d stated O\u2019Neill. \u201cHe said it himself, Derek. So, I think there\u2019s a fair distance to go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am surprised, I must admit. but it\u2019s a it\u2019s great. It\u2019s great for Scottish football. Can they sustain it to the end of the season? I don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut Celtic\u2019s results haven\u2019t been terrific then, you know, and Rangers are well, Rangers are they\u2019re a basket case at the moment. It\u2019s maybe, I will say that, it\u2019s maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What a dour start to the season for Brendan Rodgers and his Celtic side. You would think Celtic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,71562,1102,4884,79673,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-518658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-derek-mcinnes","10":"tag-edinburgh","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-martin-oneill","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}