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HEARTS ON FIRE

Maybe the sole unexpected aspect of Heart of Midlothian's victory over Celtic in the Scottish Premiership was the extent to which surprised people seemed when news of the result and its consequences for the summit of the table emerged. While this 3-1 win at Tynecastle, which leaves the Jambos top of the league and a significant margin ahead of Celtic, was earth-shattering in scale, no one who has been following the progress of both team this season will have been even remotely astonished by the final score.

For each of the last four decades, the Glasgow duopoly of Celtic and Rangers have carved up the Scottish football between them, turning fitba to almost a joke in the process. Several matches into the current season it has become apparent that Heart of Midlothian – who count Stephen Hendry, Olympic champion and renowned actor among their famous supporters – might just be ready to strike while the Old Firm iron is freezing cold.

CELTIC'S DECLINE

Although much of the attention in Scotland has been on the absolute bin-fire being endured by Rangers, the full-spectrum nightmare of the situation at Ibrox has meant that the title holders' comparatively less severe decline has been able to worsen below the radar. The reigning champions have so far lost 10 points from their opening nine fixtures this term under their manager. The team's boss has developed the thousand-yard stare of a individual who can't stop checking his Google calendar to find out how many days are remaining until his deal ends, and woke up this day to learn the answer is over two hundred.

"No one has put in more effort in my entire tenure at the club," he told the media following the defeat, after they had doubted his appetite for anything resembling a title fight. "Therefore the drive is there to attempt to flip the standards that we're at. It's absolutely fine, it's still so early."

NEW CHALLENGER

Considering the dreadful beginning to the campaign being endured by Rangers, Rodgers and his men could normally be expected to escape scrutiny for their own failure to start strongly, but on this occasion an capital city challenger has entered the mix. Despite being forced to function with a war-chest that isn't so much a tiny fraction of Celtic's as a minuscule amount in comparison, Hearts have added the investment and knowledge of Tony Bloom to the Scottish Premiership equation. In addition to investing ten million pounds during the off-season, the Premier League figurehead has granted the club sole use of his top secret data-driven Jamestown Analytics player identification system.

In Oisin McEntee, a Greek talent and Cláudio Braga it has enabled them to discover hidden talents from an English lower-league side, the Slovak first division and the Norwegian second tier, among other exotic footballing outposts, for the combined cost of a mid-range family saloon. Seen at Tynecastle on Sunday wearing a Hearts scarf, the famously shrewd sports betting expert could be observed cheering each goal with the enthusiasm of a man who had likely noticed the bookies had massively misjudged his side's prospects of defeating the out-of-sorts title holders, and filled his boots as a result.

COACH'S RESPONSE

"I don't think it's a message-sending victory," said bearded Hearts gaffer the head coach after his side's most recent victory, their eighth in nine league matches. "It might be for those on the periphery. It might change opinions. It might validate views that there's a tightrope. But we must be realistic, we're really pleased with what the players have provided us. Technically, we look in a good place, and certainly in fitness we seem in a good place, so long may that continue. Naturally, this is not a situation that the team is used to being in." No, Derek, it is not. But the wonderful, analytics-backed reality is that for the initial occasion in many years, the Scottish game might genuinely have a championship battle that a team besides Celtic or Rangers can claim.