Stendel wants to see more teams in relegation battle

Daniel Stendel hopes to turn Hearts’ two-way relegation fight with Hamilton into a wider battle for survival.

The Jambos clambered off the Ladbrokes Premiership’s bottom spot on Tuesday night with victory in the Edinburgh derby at Easter Road – only to be hurled back into the basement 24 hours later when Accies shocked Rangers at Ibrox.

Stendel expects the battle at the bottom to go down to the wire – but the German does not want to spend the last 10 games of the season worrying only about how Brian Rice’s side are getting on.

And he believes if his side can continue their winning run, it could drag other rivals such as St Mirren and Ross County into the relegation scrap.

“Sometimes we will win games and other times the other team will win games,” said Stendel.

“I think it will be decided on the last game.

“I hope we can get some more points and we can bring some other teams also into the fight to stay in the league.

“We need to keep up our performances in games to win. That will help our situation as we can’t influence the other teams.

“We have five games left before the split and we have to collect as many points as we can.

“It hasn’t really changed for us after Tuesday’s win. It was good that we won it but we have a long way to go and we need more results again.”

Now that he has secured back-to-back wins for the first time since replacing Craig Levein in December, Stendel hopes to make it a hat-trick when thirdplaced Motherwell visit Tynecastle this afternoon.