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HEARTS ON FIRE

Perhaps the only unexpected aspect of Heart of Midlothian's triumph over Celtic in the Scottish top flight was just how surprised observers seemed when news of the result and its consequences for the top of the table emerged. While this 3-1 win at Tynecastle, which puts the Edinburgh side leading of the league and eight points ahead of their rivals, was seismic in scale, no one who has been tracking the progress of both squad this campaign will have been even remotely astonished by the result.

For each of the last 40 seasons, the Glasgow duopoly of Celtic and Rangers have carved up the Scottish football between them, turning fitba to something of a joke in the meantime. Nine games into the present season it has become apparent that Hearts – who number celebrated snooker player, Sir Chris Hoy and renowned actor among their famous supporters – might just be prepared to make their move while the Old Firm iron is freezing cold.

CELTIC'S DECLINE

Although a lot of the attention in the Scottish game has been on the disastrous season being suffered by the Ibrox club, the full-spectrum nightmare of the situation at their stadium has meant that Celtic's slightly less terminal decay has been allowed to fester unnoticed. The reigning champions have so far dropped 10 points from nine fixtures this season under Brendan Rodgers. The team's boss has acquired the distant look of a man who constantly consulting his schedule to see how many time are left until his contract expires, and woke up this morning to learn the answer is over two hundred.

"I've never worked harder in all my time here," he told the media following the loss, after they had questioned his desire for any kind of a championship battle. "Therefore the drive is present to try and flip the standards that we're at. It's absolutely fine, it's still so early."

NEW CHALLENGER

Considering the horrific beginning to the campaign being endured by the other Glasgow side, the Celtic boss and his players could normally be expected to get away with their own inability to start strongly, but this year an capital city challenger has joined the mix. In spite of being obliged to function with a war-chest that isn't so much a small portion of Celtic's as a minuscule amount in comparison, the Tynecastle outfit have added the investment and knowledge of Tony Bloom to the Scottish Premiership equation. As well as putting in £10m during the off-season, the Premier League figurehead has granted the club sole use of his highly confidential data-driven proprietary scouting recruitment tool.

In Oisin McEntee, a Greek talent and a Brazilian prospect it has enabled them to discover unpolished gems 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. Spotted at Tynecastle on matchday wearing a club colours, the notoriously astute professional gambler could be observed cheering each goal with the gusto of a person who had likely noticed the oddsmakers had greatly misjudged his side's chances 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 the facial-haired Hearts gaffer the head coach after his team's most recent success, their eighth in nine outings. "It might be for those on the periphery. It might change opinions. It might validate views that there's a fine line. But let's not kid ourselves, we are delighted with what the lads have provided us. Technically, we appear in a strong position, and certainly physically we seem in a excellent shape, so we hope it persists. Naturally, 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 initial occasion in ages, the Scottish game might genuinely have a title race that a team other than Celtic or Rangers can claim.