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HEARTS ON FIRE

Perhaps the sole unexpected element of Heart of Midlothian's triumph over the Glasgow giants in the Scottish top flight was the extent to which taken aback people seemed when reports of the result and its impact for the top of the standings emerged. Although this convincing victory at their home ground, which leaves the Jambos leading of the table and eight points ahead of Celtic, was seismic in nature, no one who has been tracking the fortunes of both team this season will have been even remotely shocked by the final score.

For each of the past 40 seasons, the dominance of two Glasgow clubs of Celtic and Rangers have divided the Scottish league between them, reducing the beautiful game to something of a joke in the meantime. Several matches into the present season it has become clear that Heart of Midlothian – who number Stephen Hendry, Olympic champion and renowned actor among their famous supporters – might just be prepared to make their move while the Glasgow duo influence is freezing cold.

CELTIC'S DECLINE

While a lot of the focus in the Scottish game has been on the disastrous season being endured by Rangers, the complete turmoil of the situation at Ibrox has meant that Celtic's slightly less terminal decay has been allowed to fester unnoticed. The defending title winners have so far dropped a considerable number from their opening nine league games this term under Brendan Rodgers. The team's boss has acquired the thousand-yard stare of a man who constantly consulting his Google calendar to find out how many time are left until his deal expires, and woke up this day to discover the answer is over two hundred.

"No one has put in more effort in my entire tenure at the club," he informed the media following the defeat, after they had doubted his desire for any kind of a championship battle. "Therefore the drive is present to attempt to reverse the standards that we're at. It's absolutely fine, there is plenty of time."

EDINBURGH DISRUPTOR

Given the horrific beginning to the season being experienced by the other Glasgow side, the Celtic boss and his players could normally be anticipated to get away with their own failure to roar out of the traps, but this year an capital city challenger has entered the mix. In spite of being forced to operate with a war-chest that is not just a tiny fraction of Celtic's as a comparative budgetary baw-hair, the Tynecastle outfit 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 provided Hearts exclusive use of his top secret analytics-based proprietary scouting player identification system.

In Oisin McEntee, Alexandros Kyziridis and Cláudio Braga it has enabled them to unearth unpolished gems from an English lower-league side, the Slovak first division and the Norway's second division, among other exotic footballing outposts, for the total price of a mid-range family saloon. Spotted at their home venue on Sunday sporting a Hearts scarf, the famously shrewd sports betting expert could be seen cheering each score with the enthusiasm of a person who had almost certainly noticed the oddsmakers had massively underestimated his side's chances of defeating the out-of-sorts champions, and placed large bets 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 side's most recent victory, their eighth in nine outings. "Perhaps it is 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 lads have given us. Technically, we appear in a good place, and definitely physically we seem in a good place, so long may that continue. Naturally, it's not a position that this club is used to being in." Correct, Derek, it is not. But the wonderful, analytics-backed reality is that for the initial occasion in ages, Scottish football might actually have a title race that somebody other than Celtic or Rangers can win.