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HEARTS ON FIRE

Maybe the only surprising element of Hearts' victory over the Glasgow giants in the Scottish top flight was the extent to which surprised people seemed when reports of the outcome and its consequences for the top of the standings emerged. Although this convincing victory at Tynecastle, which leaves the Edinburgh side leading of the league and a significant margin ahead of Celtic, was earth-shattering in nature, no one who has been tracking the fortunes of both squad this season will have been in the least shocked by the final score.

For each of the past four decades, the Glasgow duopoly of Celtic and Rangers have divided the Scottish league between them, reducing fitba to almost a joke in the meantime. Nine games into the present season it has become apparent that Hearts – who count celebrated snooker player, Sir Chris Hoy and Ken Stott among their famous supporters – could be ready to strike while the Old Firm influence is freezing cold.

CELTIC'S SLUMP

Although much of the focus in the Scottish game has been on the disastrous season being endured by the Ibrox club, the complete turmoil of the situation at Ibrox has resulted in that Celtic's slightly less terminal decline has been able to fester unnoticed. The reigning champions have already dropped 10 points from nine fixtures this term under their manager. The Celtic manager has acquired the distant look of a man who can't stop consulting his schedule to see how many time are remaining until his contract ends, and awoke this day to learn the answer is over two hundred.

"No one has put in more effort in all my time here," he informed the media following the loss, after they had questioned his appetite for anything resembling a championship battle. "So the motivation is present to try and flip the levels that we're at. It's absolutely fine, it's still so early."

NEW CHALLENGER

Given the dreadful beginning to the campaign being endured by Rangers, the Celtic boss and his players could normally be expected to escape scrutiny for their own failure to start strongly, but this year an Edinburgh disruptor has entered the fray. In spite of being forced to function with a budget that is not just a small portion of their rivals' as a comparative budgetary baw-hair, the Tynecastle outfit have added the investment and knowledge of Tony Bloom to the SPL mix. As well as putting in £10m during the summer, the Premier League figurehead has granted the club exclusive use of his highly confidential data-driven Jamestown Analytics player identification system.

In Oisin McEntee, Alexandros Kyziridis and Cláudio Braga it has enabled them to discover hidden talents from Walsall, the Slovak first division and the Norwegian second tier, among other exotic footballing outposts, for the combined cost of a mid-range family saloon. Spotted at Tynecastle on Sunday wearing a club colours, the notoriously astute sports betting expert could be seen celebrating each goal with the enthusiasm of a person who had likely noticed the bookies had massively misjudged his side's chances of defeating the out-of-sorts champions, and placed large bets accordingly.

COACH'S REACTION

"In my opinion it's a message-sending victory," said the facial-haired Hearts gaffer the head coach after his team's latest victory, their eighth win in nine league matches. "Perhaps it is for those on the periphery. It could alter perceptions. It may confirm views that there's a fine line. But let's not kid ourselves, we're really pleased with what the lads have provided us. Technically, we look in a good place, and certainly physically we seem in a good place, so long may that continue. Naturally, it's not a position that the team is used to being in." Correct, Derek, it is not. But the wonderful, data-driven reality is that for the first time in ages, Scottish football might actually have a championship battle that a team besides Celtic or Rangers can claim.