Craig Levein hoping for Hearts boos upon St Johnstone visit

Saints travel to take on Hearts in Edinburgh this weekend as the newly appointed manager aims to get one over on his old side.

It will be just his third match in charge of the McDiarmid Park side after he was selected by the board to replace Steven Maclean after several years away from the dugout. 

Levein of course has a close connection with Hearts. He was a player, a manager over two spells and then was director of football.

The 59-year-old has been back at the stadium several times to conduct media duties, but it will be the first time he's visited as an opposition manager since his Dundee United days.

He had a great reputation as a Hearts player. That continued for his first stint as manager, but his relationship with the fans undoubtedly soured during his second tenure.

The experienced coach isn't worried about any bad blood looking ahead to Saturday's Premiership match. He would rather it was more of a hostile reception, in fact.

Levein said: "I’m looking forward to it. Obviously I’ve been back quite a few times to do games for the BBC but this will be a bit different.

“I don’t know if I’ll get booed – I would imagine I will. I would hope so anyway. I love it there. The atmosphere at Tynecastle is incredible.”

He added: “They’re striving for consistency. They’ve had some really good performances and others not quite so good.

“I could probably level that at every club apart from Celtic and Rangers but even they’ve been a bit sketchy at times. So I don’t know what to expect from Hearts but hopefully, I’ll get a good performance from my team.

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"This last week and a bit has been beneficial because previously I had no real experience of getting to know the players because we were preparing for two games.

“I’ve been able to see what people can and can’t do. My big thing I suppose is ‘who can we make better in a short period of time?’”