Scottish Premiership: Hearts’ Derek McInnes & Celtic’s Martin O’Neill keeping cool as title race catches fire

Celtic and their veteran manager have been here before.

O’Neill, who has won three league titles with the club, has guided the defending champions from the wreckage of Wilfried Nancy’s brief tenure to a position that looked unlikely as recently as the start of April.

Defeat at Tannadice before the international break left them five points behind with seven matches to play, but five straight wins since have narrowed the gap to one.

“They’ve known for some weeks, particularly after the game at Dundee United, that there’s no room for mistakes,” O’Neill said of his players.

“That’s hard to keep going every single game because there’ll be a match where you might actually dominate, you might not score in that period, and the other team might break away and find themselves 1-0 up.”

Much like McInnes, the former Leicester City, Aston Villa and Republic of Ireland manager is not looking beyond Wednesday.

“We can only look at ourselves and try and win the game,” O’Neill said. “Then the weekend will take care of itself.

“We’ve come a long distance here. We would like it to go to the last game.”