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JAMBOS BLAZING

Maybe the sole unexpected element of Hearts' triumph over the Glasgow giants in the Scottish top flight was the extent to which surprised people seemed when news of the outcome and its consequences for the summit of the table circulated. While this convincing victory at their home ground, 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 fortunes of both team this season will have been in the least astonished by the result.

Over the last four decades, the dominance of two Glasgow clubs of Celtic and Rangers have divided the Scottish league between them, reducing fitba to something of a joke in the meantime. Several matches into the present season it has become apparent that Hearts – who count celebrated snooker player, Olympic champion and Ken Stott among their celebrity fans – might just be ready to make their move while the Old Firm influence is freezing cold.

THE CHAMPIONS' SLUMP

While a lot of the focus in the Scottish game has been on the disastrous season being suffered by Rangers, the full-spectrum nightmare of the situation at Ibrox has resulted in that the title holders' slightly less terminal decay has been allowed to worsen unnoticed. The reigning champions have already dropped a considerable number from their opening nine league games this term under Brendan Rodgers. The Celtic manager has developed the distant look of a individual who can't stop consulting his schedule to find out how many time are left until his deal ends, and awoke this morning to discover the answer is over two hundred.

"I've never worked harder in my entire tenure at the club," he told reporters following the loss, after they had questioned his appetite for any kind of a championship battle. "Therefore the drive is present to attempt to reverse the standards that we're at. Everything is under control, there is plenty of time."

EDINBURGH DISRUPTOR

Given the horrific beginning to the season being experienced by Rangers, the Celtic boss and his players could normally be expected to escape scrutiny for their own failure to roar out of the traps, but this year an capital city challenger has joined the fray. In spite of being forced to function with a war-chest that isn't so much a small portion of their rivals' as a minuscule amount in comparison, Hearts have added the money and expertise of Tony Bloom to the SPL equation. In addition to putting in ten million pounds during the off-season, the Premier League figurehead has provided the club exclusive use of his top secret data-driven Jamestown Analytics player identification system.

In Oisin McEntee, a Greek talent and a Brazilian prospect it has enabled them to unearth hidden talents from an English lower-league side, the Slovakian top flight and the Norwegian second tier, among other exotic footballing outposts, for the total price of a modest car. Spotted at Tynecastle on matchday wearing a club colours, the famously shrewd professional gambler could be observed cheering each score with the gusto of a person who had almost certainly noticed the bookies had massively misjudged his team's prospects of defeating the struggling title holders, and placed large bets accordingly.

MANAGER'S REACTION

"I don't think it's a message-sending victory," said bearded Hearts gaffer Derek McInnes after his side's most recent victory, 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 fine line. But we must be realistic, we're really pleased with what the players have provided us. In terms of skill, we look in a good place, and certainly physically we look in a excellent shape, so we hope it persists. Of course, this is not a situation that the team is used to being in." Correct, the manager, it is not. But the glorious, analytics-backed reality is that for the initial occasion in ages, the Scottish game might actually have a championship battle that a team besides Celtic or Rangers can claim.