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SNSAway back in the mists of time – August, actually – in their third game of a tumultuous league season, Hearts came from 3-0 down at home to Motherwell to rescue a point, Harry Milne scoring once and Claudio Braga, soon to be the darling of Tynecastle, coming off the bench to score twice.
It was the first time they’d pulled off such an act of escapology in the league since 1969. At the time, nobody could have known the significance of it, beyond it being an admirable point for Derek McInnes’ team.
In reality, it was just the start of club and league milestones sent tumbling. Hearts have been top of the league since the first week of October, a piece of front-running not seen by a non-Old Firm club since Alex Ferguson was in his pomp at Aberdeen.
As October made way for November and November moved into December, Hearts endured. Outside of Celtic and Rangers, they are the only team to be top of the league at Christmas since 1993 and it was the first time since 1994-95 that they’d beaten the Old Firm twice in one season. They won four straight games against Celtic and Rangers for the first time since 1959-60.
Everybody was waiting for the bubble to burst, but it hasn’t. Injuries to key players have been overcome and Hearts remain top, the gap narrowing but never eliminated.
They are unbeaten in their Tynecastle fortress – played 17, won 13, drawn four, 10 clean sheets, 32 goals scored and only 10 conceded. If they avoid defeat against Rangers on Monday and against Falkirk on 13 May then they’ll have completed an unbeaten home league season for the first time in 40 years.
So the big two continue their game of catch-up, their four-decade long duopoly under a seismic threat.
The Scottish top flight is unique terrain in that regard. Two champion clubs in 40 years. In England, there’s been nine, in Germany there’s been seven, in Spain the number is five, in Italy it’s seven, in France it’s 10. Of the top-20 countries in the Uefa rankings, Scotland’s top league stands alone in the blanket power of just two teams.
Poland, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden have had 10 or more winners of their top league in the years of Old Firm dominance. It’s why, almost on a weekly basis from months back, Hearts have been contacted by media organisations from around the continents.
This ceased to be a Scotland-only story an age ago. It’s not even European any more. Hearts’ pursuit of history has gone global.
Rangers are now at a critical point in their season. Another false move and they’re done.
Lose on Monday and they’re seven points behind with three games to go. Win and this magnificently turbulent season will take another massive lurch. All bets would be off. There wouldn’t be enough smelling salts in the country to satisfy the demand, not enough brown paper bags for fans of the three contenders to hyperventilate into.
Rangers have hurled money at their project. Celtic spent almost £10m on two wingers last summer. Their starting side that scraped over the line against 10-man Hibernian at Easter Road on Sunday cost around £30m. Hearts, by comparison, have been put together for washers, their record signing, the injury-plagued Eduardo Ageu (£1.9m), has started one game.
Tynecastle will be an electrifying experience. The one time that Danny Rohl has taken his team there they lost.
On Friday morning, as Rohl, Nico Raskin and Mohamed Diomande spoke about facing Hearts, there was a whole load of fighting talk from the three adopted Bears.
Tynecastle was going to be “on fire” said the manager, the contest was “do or die” said Raskin, a must-win game said Diomande. Rohl said his team is facing four cup finals from now until season’s end and that they’ll be ready for whatever the league leaders and their crowd throw at them.
The problem here is a week ago Rohl said much the same thing in the build-up to the Motherwell game. It was five cup finals at that point.
In his preview of that match, he stressed Rangers needed to keep believing on the back of four straight wins and 15 goals scored. “We have to run, we have to fight,” he said of the imminent arrival of Motherwell to Ibrox. “(We have to) let the opponent know what it feels like to be at Ibrox at the moment.”
When Motherwell passed them to distraction to open a 2-0 lead in the first half, everybody could see what it felt like to be at Ibrox. Noisy and angry.
Rangers were not just outplayed, they were outthought. Motherwell had a surgical precision about them. They were a class above a Rangers team that’s had £40m spent on it in under 12 months – about double Motherwell’s entire turnover for three seasons combined.
It was the third time in seven games Rangers fell two goals behind – they got a 2-2 draw against Livingston, roared on to beat Falkirk 6-3 but got caught by Motherwell, losing 3-2 in the end. Can a side with such a weakness in its make-up be trusted to win on Monday?
There is a soft underbelly to this Rangers team. They can deliver pockets of really good stuff and goals in clusters, but their unimpressive moments have put them in the last chance saloon.
On Friday, Rohl and Raskin spoke about the character they’ve shown to fight back from a near-death experience under Russell Martin, the guts it has taken to make themselves contenders. But their hopes are hanging by a thread heading to Edinburgh.
Of course, there is pressure all round. Heaps of it. With their backs to the wall, Rangers will surely come out swinging. Hearts will have to hold their nerve. Celtic finding a winner against Hibs sets things up perfectly for Tynecastle.
Rohl says he knows what to expect from Hearts and their supporters, but does he really? Does anybody? Expecting the unexpected has been a sensible policy this season. So, onwards we go into the fun and the chaos, with pulses quickening all the while.
