Celtic are now within three points of Hearts and Derek McInnes is fuming.
The Hearts boss watched his side almost battle back from 3-0 down at Hibs just a couple of hours before Celtic beat Livingston.
McInnes would have been confident heading into the Edinburgh Derby after Hearts beat Celtic and Rangers in recent weeks but it appears that the pressure of being top dogs may have been too much for the capital club.
Will we hunt Hearts down and win the title?
In 48 minutes, Hearts were three goals down and barely kicking their own backside until a late fightback almost saved McInnes a point.
Despite that, the Tynecastle club’s 3-2 defeat to Hibs allowed Celtic to close the gap at the top of the Scottish Premiership table and the Hearts manager was very unhappy about it.
Derek McInnes rues Hearts failing the ‘basics’ as Celtic close in
The Hearts boss was clearly unhappy at losing to Hibs as McInnes blasted his team for failing to do the basics at Easter Road.
McInnes told The Scottish Sun, “We’ve had loads of plaudits this season about how we play, the goals we score, the individual element of our team, but we didn’t do the basics well enough today.
“It’s as simple as that. You can look at team selection, you can look at all the rest of it, but we don’t stop a switch of play, we don’t stop a cross and we don’t match a run.
“We’ve got the way we’ve got this season, not by being Barcelona, not by being something that we think we are and we’re not, but by doing the basics well and playing from that.
“We certainly put ourselves in such a sticky situation at losing the third goal and for about five minutes after that I thought our body language wasn’t great because we’re not used to it.”
McInnes bemoans Hearts’ ‘strength and character’ as Celtic close the gap
McInnes is correct, Hearts have been getting the plaudits, and deservedly so, this season. But as the Tynecastle boss found out, if your team is not on it for all the big games, punishment is just around the corner.
McInnes continued, “Then you saw the strength, character and spirit of the team. Shankland gets a goal and from there on in, you just saw Hibs having a wee wobble.
“But you can’t expect to play for half an hour. We played far better in that last half hour than we did for the first hour of the game and that’s why we’ve lost the game. “But I know we’re better than what we showed in that first part.
“If we have two defeats in the next 19 games that we have, then we’ve had an unbelievable season. It’s important that we remind ourselves of that.”
Celtic are just three points adrift of Hearts and a win by five goals or more against Motherwell, who lost to Rangers, will see Wilfried Nancy end 2025 at the top of the league table.
Who would have thought that at Tannadice when Celtic collapsed against Dundee United?
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