Hearts tick off another Derek McInnes challenge with rout of Dundee

Hearts boss Derek McInnes praised his side’s professionalism after ending the first quarter of the William Hill Premiership season unbeaten and with a nine-point lead after beating Dundee 4-0.

McInnes was delighted with his side as they brushed aside a Dundee side that had taken points off of Rangers and Celtic this season with a commanding display at Tynecastle.

Lawrence Shankland’s opener was followed by first Hearts goals for Landry Kabore and Tomas Magnusson as the Jambos ran riot.

McInnes said: “We’re delighted with it. We said the point at St Mirren (in midweek) would be a brilliant and important point if we won today, and that’s the way it has been.

“A few weeks ago we set a challenge to players, ‘can we be above Celtic before we play them?’. And then ‘can we be top of the league after the first round of fixtures?’.

“We’ve boxed off that little section now and we need to go again for the start of the next round.

“It’s a good reference point for me in the sense of what can be done, and there are some difficult fixtures amongst that, some difficult challenges, and I feel as though the squad’s getting stronger.

“We have a couple of borderline suspensions with Craig Halkett and Harry Milne, but we’re getting a few back.”

Goals from Shankland and Kabore in the space of seven first-half minutes had the hosts 2-0 up by the interval, with Kabore adding a second before substitute Magnusson finished the scoring.

McInnes added: “Once we got in front, and it was a brilliant goal from Lawrence, like all good teams I thought we never looked back from that.

“We scored some good goals today and I’m delighted for big Landry to get off the mark, I thought he led the line brilliantly with Lawrence, and it was good to get the last goal from Tomas to finish off the game with a bit of polish.

“We looked a wee bit leggy at times but we were in charge of the game, which is the most important thing.”

Dundee boss Steven Pressley felt his side were in the game until Shankland’s 31st-minute opener, and conceded they were well turned over.

He said: “We came here and had a genuine quiet belief around maybe getting a result here. We’ve demonstrated that against some of the best teams, that when we get it right we can be competitive.

“I thought we started the game reasonably aggressively in the first 30 minutes, I didn’t think we gave up many opportunities and frustrated Hearts without causing them too many problems, apart from Cam Congreve’s effort.

“We then lost a really poor goal and a second one quite quickly after that. One of the real disappointments for me is that we came into this game as the only side not to lose a goal from a corner kick, and we lost two today.

“When you come to the top-of-the-table team, the one thing you can’t do is lose two goals from set plays. That’s really disappointing, because we really pride ourselves on that organisation.”