Jubilant Craig Levein LOVES beating Hibs as Hearts lifer takes glee in nosing up the angry natives

Chuffed Craig Levein rubbed salt into Hibs wounds by declaring 'I love it'.

The St Johnstone boss picked up a brilliant win on the road to dent Nick Montgomery and his troops' hopes of finishing in the top six while boosting his own survival hopes with the gap between themselves and Ross County in the relegation play-off spot sitting at four points after their victory in Leith coupled up with the Staggies' loss at European-chasing Kilmarnock.

Levein - who is no stranger to winding up the Hibs support as a former Hearts boss - was at it again in his post-match interview. The question posed to the former Scotland boss was: "I don't know how many times you've been to this ground Craig, but you never fail to enjoy winning here do you?" A smug Levein replied: "I love it."

On the performance of his players, he told BBC Scotland: "It is all down to the willingness to do the work on the field and I thought the players were outstanding. Last week we had a really good performance and we didn't manage to get the points we deserved. Today was even more pleasing because we had the performance and managed to get the three points.

"There were a lot of really good things, I thought defensively we were really solid. Dimi [Mitov] made a few really good saves, making up for his rare mistake last week and I'm thrilled for him because he deserves to get credit for what he did.

"Our aim is to see if we can catch some of the teams above us. We've got a lot of tough matches coming up, really important matches and if I can get that type of performance I'll take it."