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Derek McInnes knows his Hearts side are not Barcelona, but he knows what his team need to be if they are to sustain a Scottish Premiership title challenge.
A chaotic 3-2 derby defeat at Hibernian consigned the leaders to just a second league loss of the season in their 19th match.
Despite responding with an attempted fightback, McInnes lamented his players not doing the basics well enough as they went three down at Easter Road on Saturday.
The Hearts boss says his side now "need to own" a "sore" afternoon in Leith, but he is not prepared to "lose all wherewithal" after a disappointing day.
"We get to the top of the league not by being Barcelona, not by being something we don't think we are, it's by doing basics well in games," the 54-year-old told BBC Scotland.
"If you don't do the basics well, it doesn't matter how good you are or how good a run you're on, you're going to end up with a sore one.
"The second half we gave a much more familiar showing to what we normally do. I think it's two defeats in 19, if we have two defeats out of the next 19, we've had a brilliant season, an unbelievable season.
"We're not going to start losing all wherewithal at this moment in time. We've lost a game and we know the reasons why we've lost the game."
Defeat in Leith meant Celtic were able to narrow the gap at the summit to three points with a chaotic win of their own at Livingston.
Wilfried Nancy's men still have a game in hand and could potentially be top on goal difference by the time Hearts play again on 3 January.
But McInnes is convinced his players will not be derailed by the loss to their city rivals.
After a challenging run of fixtures, a more favourable schedule - on paper - is on the way for Hearts.
They have a week off before facing bottom side Livingston. A trip to Dundee follows, then it is a home game against St Mirren.
Positive results in those would have McInnes' side in a good place for the mouth-watering Tynecastle encounter with Celtic at the end of January.
"You never want to lose a derby and we're gutted for the fans," McInnes said. "But it's not going to upset us and derail us in terms of the upcoming games.
"I trust these lads. The lads have had a lot of grace from me and a lot of credit in the bank, but we've got to be honest that we gave ourselves too much to do today."
McInnes also hopes to be boosted by winter signings.
Kazakhstan winger Islam Chesnokov is expected to arrive "in the next few days" and the head coach is hopeful of "some good news" on one or two further additions.
"We want to try and equip ourselves the best way possible," McInnes added.
"Obviously, expectations have risen. Like I said when we first came in, we wanted to try and at least meet expectations, what the supporters want and hopefully in turn we can exceed the expectations.
"Now that's expected of us, we need to make sure we keep doing our work well."
