Head coach Derek McInnes admits he won’t be making any rash predictions for the upcoming season, but says the group are keen to make up for a disappointing campaign last time out.
The 25.26 Premiership season gets underway on Monday, with the Jambos welcoming Aberdeen to Gorgie in front of the Sky Sports cameras.
The men in maroon have already gone four from four in their League Cup group stages, and McInnes believes there’s no shying away from the demands at the club.
Speaking to the media ahead of Monday night’s showdown, McInnes said:
“Obviously, we've got to improve clearly on what we served up last season. As a club, we never really got what we wanted.
“There was obviously the extra demand of European football, but domestically, not to get to the Cup final and not even get top six. We've got a lot to do to make up for last season.
“We'd like to think that we can be searching and striving for European football in amongst those places and try to get to Hampden. I don't think any Hearts player or any Hearts manager or staff should shy away from that demand. It's clearly there.
“We accept it and we've got to go and set about the task of doing that. We're not here to mess about. We're here to try and do something while we're here.
“I do feel that a Hearts player, when they sign here, should have those objectives. I think it's clearly what the Hearts fans expect. As I said when I got announced as a manager, all we've got to try and do, first and foremost, is meet the expectations of the Hearts fans.
“I would say that their expectations is what we expect from ourselves. Beyond that, going forward, hopefully we can exceed those expectations. For now, we're not going to shout our mouths off.
“We're going to do this and we're going to do that. In the back of last season, we never reached a final and we were in the bottom six. There's work to be done.
“We're encouraged by what the players have given us since they’ve come in. It's not just about new signings and this new wave of new players. Any new player coming in has got a part to play.
“Equally, the players who were here last season, the players who have been here for a while, have got a huge part to play as well. It's those players that we feel we're really pleased with, that we're getting good performances out of as well. It's a collective effort to try and meet that demand.”
You can watch Derek’s press conference in full on Hearts TV.
