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JAMBOS BLAZING

Perhaps the sole surprising aspect of Heart of Midlothian's triumph over the Glasgow giants in the Scottish Premiership was the extent to which surprised people seemed when reports of the result and its consequences for the summit of the table emerged. Although this 3-1 win at Tynecastle, which leaves the Jambos top of the league and a significant margin ahead of Celtic, was seismic in scale, no one who has been following the progress of both team this season will have been even remotely shocked by the result.

Over the last four decades, 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. Nine games into the present season it has become clear that Hearts – who number celebrated snooker player, Olympic champion and renowned actor among their famous supporters – might just be ready to strike while the Old Firm iron is freezing cold.

THE CHAMPIONS' SLUMP

While much of the attention in the Scottish game has been on the absolute bin-fire being suffered by the Ibrox club, the complete turmoil of the situation at Ibrox has meant that the title holders' slightly less terminal decline has been allowed to worsen below the radar. The defending title winners have already dropped 10 points from nine league games this term under their manager. The team's boss 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 expires, and awoke this day to discover the number is over two hundred.

"No one has put in more effort in my entire tenure at the club," he informed the media following the loss, after they had doubted his appetite for any kind of a championship battle. "So the motivation is there to attempt to flip the levels that we're at. It's absolutely fine, there is plenty of time."

NEW CHALLENGER

Given the horrific beginning to the campaign being endured by Rangers, the Celtic boss and his men could normally be anticipated to get away with their own inability to roar out of the traps, but this year an capital city challenger has entered the mix. Despite being obliged to function with a war-chest that is not just a tiny fraction of Celtic's as a comparative budgetary baw-hair, the Tynecastle outfit have introduced the investment and expertise of Tony Bloom to the Scottish Premiership mix. In addition to investing ten million pounds during the off-season, the Premier League figurehead has granted Hearts sole use of his highly confidential data-driven proprietary scouting player identification system.

In an Irish defender, Alexandros Kyziridis and Cláudio Braga it has allowed them to discover unpolished gems from an English lower-league side, the Slovakian top flight and the Norway's second division, among other exotic footballing outposts, for the combined cost of a mid-range family saloon. Spotted at their home venue on matchday sporting a Hearts scarf, the famously shrewd professional gambler could be seen celebrating each goal with the enthusiasm of a person who had likely noticed the oddsmakers had greatly underestimated his team's prospects of defeating the struggling champions, and filled his boots as a result.

COACH'S RESPONSE

"In my opinion it's a message-sending victory," said the facial-haired Hearts gaffer Derek McInnes after his team's most recent success, their eighth in nine outings. "It might be for others on the outside looking in. It could alter perceptions. It may confirm opinions that there's a tightrope. But let's not kid ourselves, we are delighted with what the lads have given us. Technically, we appear in a good place, and certainly in fitness we seem in a excellent shape, so we hope it persists. Naturally, it's not a position that the team is used to being in." Correct, the manager, it isn't. But the wonderful, analytics-backed truth is that for the first time in many years, Scottish football might genuinely have a championship battle that a team other than the traditional powers can win.