McInnes is a better manager than Rodgers

HEARTS didn’t just play Celtic off the park yesterday.

Right now, as a club, they’re streets ahead of the champions in every department.

They’ve got their recruitment bang on.

The connection with their fans is unbreakable.

While Peter Lawwell and his cohorts are being depicted with their heads covered by terrorist-style hoods, Tynecastle moneyman Tony Bloom is posing for selfies with punters.

And as for in the dugout?

DRIVING SEAT

Hearts troll Rodgers after win v Celtic as fans say ‘I see what you did there’

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Bottom line is that, right now, Derek McInnes is a better manager than Brendan Rodgers.

The result at Tynecastle showed that.

His team were more up for it. His tactics were clearer. His in-game management and substitutions were far superior.

Everything about him epitomised everything that’s good about life in Gorgie right now — whereas you looked at Rodgers and saw a man who seems to have run out of ideas as a malaise sweeps through his team like chickenpox through a nursery school.

Never mind Honda Civics. This was a clown car of a performance from Celtic, complete with honky-honky horn and strawberry blancmange in the radiator.

Apart from a little ten-minute spell when captain Callum McGregor threatened to haul them out of trouble single-handed, they were imposters.

As with their dismal defeat at Dens Park a week earlier, there was never a moment here — not even when McGregor made it 1-1 — when the home hordes would have worried that their lead at the top was going to be cut.

Their heroes simply looked more up for it, stronger, quicker and better organised.

They gave themselves a shake at half-time, went back in front with a second as well struck as it was woefully defended, then in a blink of an eye panicked Celtic into giving away a penalty for the third.

And who can deny that they played like potential champions?

Not me, because this was a statement result, one that didn’t just put them eight points clear — with the chance to make it at least 11 by this time next week — but which screamed: We’re not going away.

As McInnes marched across the centre circle at time up, index fingers pointing to the turf and mouthing ‘This Is Ours’, the message was clear.

If anybody wants to knock them off the top, they’d better bring their A-plus game whether it’s at Tynecastle or any other ground in the league.

What the pundits said during Hearts vs Celtic coverage

NEIL LENNON

“Sometimes you can’t keep going on an upwards trajectory even though you want to.

“I’ve experienced it myself. It’s hard to keep that momentum going all the time.

“I don’t know what went on in the summer window but they have spent a bit of money.

“I know Tounekti’s club wouldn’t let him go initially, Celtic made a bid, they turned it down and didn’t let him go until after the Champions League.

“So I have sympathy with that.

“There’s this talk that they haven’t done their best or try their best, but I’m sure behind the scenes they’ve been trying everything they could to try to get the quality of player.

“Tounekti looks a good player to me, Nygren is the leading goalscorer and Balikwisha, we don’t know what he can do yet.

“You need to let them settle.”

“It’s inconceivable to think they can go on to win it but the reality is there right in front of us.

“They have a decent lead and we’re watching it with our own eyes.

“Hearts were the better team and thoroughly deserved to win.

“Second half they were strong, they did brilliantly and have strength from the bench

“They’re humble, sometimes you see teams beating Celtic and it’s like they’ve won the league.

“Maybe he does need to tweak it a little bit to get more out of the team then go back to the way he wants to play.

“Certainly now he will be digging deep to find answers and get the performances he’s looking for.

“Do they have the quality? Yeah, they do but he’s just not getting enough of certain individuals that’s for sure.”

CHRIS SUTTON

“At this moment in time he’s saying basically the players he’s been given are sub-standard.

“You can’t polish a turd, that’s what he’s saying.

“Brendan gave his message before the start of the season and he gave a clear message again last week.

“I don’t agree with what Brendan says but he is at the end of his tether, he’s watching his team and knows the quality of player he’s been given is not at the level is should be.

“Celtic should have kicked on from last season, in terms of the Champions League.

“What is the prime reason for Celtic being as sub-standard as they have this season?

“Brendan has a track record of being a successful coach.

“This is a guy who has won 11 major honours at Celtic, a guy who has been an outstanding coach.

“He’s a guy who has developed the likes of Matt O’Riley, Alistair Johnston and Nicholas Kuhn.”

“Hearts will never get a better opportunity with the state of Celtic and Rangers.

“They deserved to win, Celtic were powderpuff.

“This Celtic team are a shambles – how many Celtic players would get in the Hearts team today?

“Hearts were streetwise, organised and had better forward players.”

KRIS BOYD

“I think that is so disrespectful when you look at the way Hearts bullied Celtic all over the pitch.

“To question the way Derek McInnes and Hearts play because Celtic didn’t come here and win.

“They got bullied – deal with it.

“When you speak about fast, attacking football that’s not their DNA, winning is Celtic’s DNA.

“There has been teams in the past who haven’t played fast, attacking football but they’ve won.

“But to come out and have a go at Derek McInnes or his team for the way they played, that’s so disrespectful for me.

“The way he spoke was as if the goalkeeper was getting it in his hands and launching it, or the defenders were kicking it high in the air like it was a game of rugby.

“That was absolutely nothing what it was like out there.

“It’s not Derek McInnes’ fault the Celtic centre halves couldn’t win headers.

“Brendan Rodgers is an elite manager with the trophies he’s won and the impact he’s had going into football clubs.

“But you now have to look at it and ask why Callum McGregor hasn’t been off it for a while, why is he not getting the best out of Engels?

“Why is he not getting the best out of Hatate? Why does Kieran Tierney look absolutely miles off it?

“Tounetki has come in and had rave reviews, he’s scored one goal against Partick Thistle and no assists.

“Why is Brendan Rodgers not been able to get the best out of players? It’s always been pointed at the board but that’s a distraction.
“Today is another deflection as well.

“It’s over to Brendan Rodgers to get his team back playing football in a way they can win games.”

He’ll know it could all change in no time, course he will.

A couple of key injuries here, a drop off in form there, a slice of bad luck somewhere else and maybe come March we’ll be looking back and seeing this as a flash-in-the-pan spell. This isn’t Aberdeen at the same time last year, though, a run that was always too good to be true, one which relied on an awful lot of good fortune as well as some good football.

No, this is all about the different elements that take a good football club to the next level together at the same time.

A textbook case of financiers and directors and management and players and fans all being in perfect step.

Celtic would kill for that level of synchronicity right now. So too, for that matter, would their troubled rivals across Glasgow.

There’s a trust about Hearts that simply isn’t there in the team they beat.

And we see this in decisions like Rodgers preferring to throw rookie Dane Murray to the wolves rather than playing £6million buy Auston Trusty at centre-back.

He wasn’t helped by losing four key men in Cameron Carter-Vickers, Daizen Maeda, Alistair Johnson and Kelechi Iheanacho, no doubt about that.

But even then, it’s eye-opening to see any Celtic side so devoid of fight in a crisis that the two gaffers might as well have shaken hands once Lawrence Shankland made it 3-1 for all the chance there was of a comeback.

Rodgers has done his best to deflect the blame for Celtic’s shoddy start to the season away from himself with his snipes about penny-pinching, by playing to the gallery, stoking the anger of fans against the board.

But with every performance this stodgy and result this dodgy, I’m afraid he only brings himself more and more into the spotlight and under the microscope.

Truth is, he can complain all he likes about a lack of backing from upstairs, but in back-to-back defeats at Dundee and Hearts he’s used an £11m midfielder, a full-back brought in on fortunes from Arsenal and a pair of £5m wingers.

You could buy a whole lot of Honda Civics for that kind of cash, yet last week he was out-thought by Steven Pressley and this week it’s Derek McInnes.

If Danny Rohl does it to him at Hampden next Sunday?

Well, to borrow one of his own most famous quotes, it could be close to terminado.

ABERDEEN were torn to bits in Athens a few nights back.

Yet somehow, losing 2-1 at home to Hibs yesterday seemed an even worse display than the one they had in shipping six to AEK.

They were just so soulless, so leaderless. There were long spells in the game when they really did look lost.

And the same must be said for a manager in Jimmy Thelin whose store of goodwill must surely be running low, Cup win or no Cup win.

Sugardaddy Dave Cormack was in the main stand to see a defeat that could easily have been by four or five but for some poor Hibees finishing — and which takes their league points haul to just 38 out of 114 available in a calendar year.

At most clubs these days, those are job-losing stats.

So you’d guess Thelin’s future depends on whether Cormack, who has backed him big time, sees one magical day at Hampden as what defines the Swedish gaffer.

Or whether the other 364 days since the slump began is the true reality of the situation they find themselves in.

SIR ALEX always did love backing a winner.

So, even although his latest one COST him money, he’ll have been a happy man on Saturday night when Benburb beat Wick Academy on penalties to reach the third round of the Scottish Cup against the odds.