Hearts head coach Derek McInnes insists he has no fear taking his unbeaten team anywhere ahead of their trip to face Aberdeen on Sunday.
McInnes’ side are top of the Scottish Premiership having won nine of their opening 12 league games while avoiding defeat, results that earned a seven-point advantage over Celtic having played one game more.
“We understand it’s going to be a tough game for us but I don’t have any fear of going anywhere with my team,” he said.
“I feel as though we can go anywhere and have the belief that we can get a result but we have to play well. We’re motivated to win the game and if we play well, we’ve got a chance.
“We’ve won at some tough places, we’ve won at some places we’ve struggled with over the years and Sunday provides another opportunity.”
McInnes conceded that it’s likely teams now view defeating his side as a scalp given their results to date.
“I’d probably assume so to be honest,” he explained. “I get that we’re there to be shot at and I think there’s a lot of teams who would take a lot of pleasure in seeing us beat, not just the team that would try to beat us but a lot of other teams.
“Up until now everybody’s tried and we’ll see how far we can go with this. We want to just keep being strong.
“Our fight is with ourselves, nobody else, and we understand that while other teams’ motivation may be a bit higher, our motivation has to go with that.
“Something we spoke about with the players is that the motivation has to remain high to keep doing what we’re doing.”
