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HEARTS ON FIRE

Maybe the only surprising element of Hearts' victory over Celtic in the Scottish top flight was the extent to which surprised people appeared when reports of the result and its impact for the top of the standings emerged. Although this convincing victory at their home ground, which puts the Jambos top of the league and a significant margin clear of Celtic, was earth-shattering in scale, nobody who has been tracking the fortunes of either team this campaign will have been even remotely astonished by the final score.

For each of the past 40 seasons, the Glasgow duopoly of the Old Firm have divided the Scottish football between them, reducing the beautiful game to almost a punchline in the meantime. Several matches into the current season it has become apparent that Hearts – who count celebrated snooker player, Sir Chris Hoy and Ken Stott among their famous supporters – might just be prepared to strike while the Old Firm iron is freezing cold.

CELTIC'S DECLINE

Although a lot of the focus in the Scottish game has been on the disastrous season being suffered by the Ibrox club, the complete turmoil of the circumstances at their stadium has meant that Celtic's comparatively less severe decay has been able to fester unnoticed. The reigning champions have already dropped a considerable number from their opening nine fixtures this term under their manager. The team's boss has acquired the distant look of a man who constantly checking his schedule to find out how many time are remaining until his contract expires, and woke up this morning to discover the answer is over two hundred.

"I've never worked harder in my entire tenure here," he informed the media following the defeat, after they had questioned his desire for anything resembling a championship battle. "So the motivation is there to attempt to reverse the standards that we're at. It's absolutely fine, it's still so early."

NEW CHALLENGER

Considering the dreadful start to the campaign being endured by the other Glasgow side, the Celtic boss and his players could typically be anticipated to get away with their own failure to start strongly, but on this occasion an Edinburgh disruptor has entered the fray. Despite being obliged to operate with a war-chest that isn't so much a tiny fraction of Celtic's as a comparative budgetary baw-hair, the Tynecastle outfit have introduced the money and expertise of Tony Bloom to the Scottish Premiership equation. As well as putting in ten million pounds during the off-season, the Premier League figurehead has provided the club sole use of his highly confidential data-driven Jamestown Analytics recruitment tool.

In Oisin McEntee, Alexandros Kyziridis and Cláudio Braga it has allowed them to unearth hidden talents from an English lower-league side, the Slovak first division and the Norwegian second tier, among other lesser-known leagues, for the total price of a modest car. Spotted at Tynecastle on Sunday wearing a Hearts scarf, the famously shrewd sports betting expert could be observed celebrating each score with the gusto of a man who had likely noticed the oddsmakers had massively misjudged his team's chances of beating the struggling title holders, and filled his boots as a result.

COACH'S RESPONSE

"In my opinion it's a message-sending victory," said bearded team manager Derek McInnes after his side's most recent victory, their eighth in nine league matches. "Perhaps it is for others on the periphery. It could alter opinions. It might validate views that there's a tightrope. But we must be realistic, we're really pleased with what the lads have given us. Technically, we look in a strong position, and definitely in fitness we look in a excellent shape, so we hope it persists. Of course, it's not a position that the team is accustomed to being in." Correct, Derek, it is not. But the glorious, analytics-backed reality is that for the first time in ages, Scottish football might actually have a championship battle that a team besides the traditional powers can claim.