Willing spy Derek McInnes lays out plans with Hearts given weekend off amid 'long week'

McInnes has already spent a decent chunk of July swotting up on this season’s opposition, even if he is well-versed in Scottish football. This season is different for the 54-year-old in that he is in charge of new club. After swapping Kilmarnock for Hearts earlier in the summer, he can’t wait to get the league up and running amid heightened expectations for his team this term.

Tynecastle will be packed to the rafters for the visit of the Dons. By that point, every other team will have been in action. McInnes plans to take in some matches in person.

“It's been a long week,” admitted McInnes. “It's one of these unusual weeks when you have to wait to the Monday. We're all getting out to watch games this weekend. I've seen Motherwell, picked them up this season, picked St Mirren up this season, already.

“You always like to see what teams are doing, new signings and whatever. Like last season, what teams are playing a back five, what teams are committing to a back four. You try and kind of get a flavour of how they're going to be. And you always see what the new signings are like. That kind of interest to see what players are bringing to different clubs

“But I think tactics and systems can sometimes be a bit overplayed. I think it's all about whoever makes the good signings, I think that can be key, because I think clearly there's a lot of people doing it their own way and a lot of people are investing money.

Seventh just wasn’t good enough for Hearts

“We've just got to assume that everybody's doing their job well, but we've got to be doing our job as well as we can. If we're doing the job as well as we can with the budget that's afforded to me, with the resource that we've got, with the facilities and everything else, we should be expecting a lot more from ourselves than we did last year. There's no doubt about it.”

Finishing seventh last term wasn’t good enough and fell beneath minimum expectations. Many have Hearts down to finish third given the strength of the squad and the presence of McInnes, who has them purring already. They scored four goals in all of their Premier Sports Cup matches and defeated Sunderland 3-0 last weekend.

“The game itself [against Aberdeen] is everything you want from the first game of the season,” continued McInnes. “Home game, live on Sky, sell-out, up against a good team, good players. There'll be a lot of good players on the pitch on Monday night. We just want to make sure we're as prepared as we can, which I think we are.

“Come Monday, we've just got to be ready to go. And I'm pretty sure that through the close season, what we've had, I think we look ready. We look fit, we look competitive, we look motivated. We look as if we've got good options.

I think the pre-season, although it's never a truly an indication, plenty of goals, plenty of clean sheets, a nice feel-good factor. It's important that we try and keep this feeling as long as we can. Well aware there'll be a belt in the mouth around the corner, which we want to keep to a minimum this season, if we can. And hopefully we can just keep this feeling that we're all getting at the minute going.”