Hearts aim to break Celtic and Rangers' 41-year dominance in the Scottish Premiership. With a chance to win their first title since 1960, they must avoid defeat at Celtic Park on the final day.
Key points
Hearts could end 41 years of Old Firm dominance.
Celtic and Rangers have 55 domestic titles each.
Hearts last won the Scottish Premiership in 1960.
Investment from Tony Bloom aims to strengthen Hearts.
Hearts must avoid defeat at Celtic Park to win the title.
Mentioned in this story
Tony Bloom
HeartsCelticRangers
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Is one of the greatest duopolies in sport about to be broken? For 41 years Scottish football has had two champions, the collective dominance of Rangers and Celtic extending through plenty of down years for one and/or the other, promises of Champions League winners being forged at Tynecastle and even the liquidation of the former in 2012.
Boiling it down to the last time Celtic or Rangers did not win the Scottish Premier Division, as it was then, almost does a disservice to the dominance the Old Firm have exerted. Both have 55 domestic titles to their name -- only Linfield of Northern Ireland have more -- and no one else in the division has four. Only once in the 135 year history of the Scottish Football League have the rest of the country managed to keep one of these two off the top spot for three years in a row, and would that have happened if Aberdeen didn't happen to have employed arguably the greatest manager of all-time, a pre-Manchester United Sir Alex Ferguson? That's what it takes to knock Rangers and Celtic off top spot.
As such, while the investment into Heart of Midlothian by Brighton owner Tony Bloom last summer, several months after the club had partnered with his firm Jamestown Analytics, came with much fanfare, few thought it would bring an immediate end to the Old Firm's generational streak of dominance. It still might not. However, going into the final day, Hearts know that their first Scottish Premiership crown since 1960 is within reach...if they can just find a way of getting back from Celtic Park without having lost.
For Hearts fans of a certain age, it must be a terrifying call back to the 1985-86 season, when a side that had gone unbeaten between October and April reached the finishing line needing only to draw away at Dundee. A 2-0 loss at Dens Park and the title, which would have been their fifth ever and first since 1960, went Celtic's way. Nearly two decades later, in the aftermath of Roman Abramovich's takeover of Chelsea, there was reason to hope that Hearts might muscle their way in when Vladimir Romanov took over the club with promises to wipe the debt and then forge a European champion in Edinburgh. It never got better than the eight straight wins to start the season before George Burley was sacked early in 2005-06.
Might this year be different? Derek McInnes' side flew out of the traps early in the season and have just about held on since, riding a storm of three defeats in six games and beating Rangers to knock them out of the title race earlier this month. Now it is Celtic and a finale fit for a blockbuster.
Q&A
How long have Celtic and Rangers dominated the Scottish Premiership?
Celtic and Rangers have dominated the Scottish Premiership for 41 years.
When was the last time Hearts won the Scottish Premiership?
Hearts last won the Scottish Premiership in 1960.
What must Hearts do to win the title this season?
Hearts must avoid losing their final match at Celtic Park to secure the title.
What significant investment has been made in Hearts recently?
Hearts received investment from Brighton owner Tony Bloom, aimed at enhancing the club's performance.
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"It's a perfect ending to a season for the league, for Scottish football, for drama and excitement," said McInnes. "It's pure box office. I felt for a while it would go the full way, and we've been preparing for that.
"There might be people out there who think everything's back on script - 'Celtic win their home game, they win the league.' But we've ripped the script up so often this season, and we've got one more in us I think, and it's up to us to try and make that happen."
Anyone familiar with sports movies might feel that Hearts' season is not too far off a script that they've seen dramatized before. Their supporters will certainly hope that they are not doomed for the same ending as the "Moneyball" Oakland Athletics. Of course, that particular word brings up certain connotations, and it's fair to say that what Hearts have not done is pioneered a new way of playing the game quite like Billy Beane did when he embraced Sabremetrics, although they do lead the league in goals off inswinging corners. Hearts' potential title win is a triumph of McInnes' management and a raucous Tynecastle, but it is primarily one of recruitment. No wonder when they have access to what investor James Anderson, the man who put his own money up before bringing Bloom on board, terms "the best data set in the world."
Claudio Braga was snared from Norway's second division. With 14 goals and three assists, he was voted the Scottish Premiership's player of the season. Alexandros Kyziridis ranks second in the division for expected assists (xA). He was previously playing in the mid-table of Slovakia. Pierre Kabore trails only one player in non-penalty expected goals (npxG) + xA this season. The Burkina Faso international was previously at Estonia's Narva Trans.
A club of Hearts' finances, even after investment from Anderson and Bloom, doesn't have the means for shoe leather scouting in the far reaches of European football. It is their access to Jamestown's data, first and foremost, that has allowed them to compete with Celtic, whose own recent success has been aided by Japanese imports. It has also been aided by an annual turnover of over $190 million. Hailing from the capital city, Edinburgh, Hearts are the third richest club in Scotland behind the Old Firm. Their most recent earnings were around $32.5 million.
Surely it takes more than even the best recruitment to bridge what was a 40-point gap between Hearts and Celtic last season? That it does, and it's fair to say that the former timed their ascent quite excellently. This has been a down year for Celtic, one that began with Brendan Rodgers angling for a way out as he bemoaned recruitment, encompassed a dramatic month under former Columbus Crew boss Wilfried Nancy and which only just settled when Martin O'Neill was brought back for a third stint in the new year.
Celtic haven't played at the level that delivered them four straight Scottish Premiership crowns. They have lost more games this league season than in any since 1999-2000. Their npxG difference per game of 1.12 is way down on their record in any of the preceding four seasons, all over 1.5. It is, however, the best in the country by an extremely significant margin.
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The holders have left a string of points on the board, typified in the Nancy interregnum. With two wins and four defeats in the Premiership, it will go down in history as the most disastrous managerial appointments the modern Scottish game has seen, particularly if Hearts do indeed hold on on Saturday. However, in those six games, Celtic created chances worth 16.55 xG and allowed chances worth 6.82. They scored 10 and conceded 12. They created nine non-penalty chances worth more than half an expected goal, the sort for which the pundit's refrain of "he has to score that" rings true. They scored three of them. For the season as a whole, Celtic are still more than eight goals down on their xG.
In many leagues such a bad run of finishing combined with the institutional chaos at Parkhead would doom even a serial winner. Celtic instead head into their final match of the league season as odds-on favorites to win the title. And perhaps the luck that might have eluded Nancy shone down on them on Wednesday night as they won an extremely contentious penalty at Motherwell -- what looks to have been a headed clearance by Sam Nicholson judged to be a handball -- whose conversion kept them alive in the race, setting the stage for Saturday's grand conclusion.
"We have to win it, Hearts don't, so the advantage is with them in that aspect," said O'Neill, "but we're going out all guns blazing to try and win. The game's in the balance. We're at home, we have to win. Hearts have to just avoid defeat. It'll be a tough game for both teams."
O'Neill might be right that the advantage is with Hearts in terms of the table on Saturday morning, but that is one that has been hard won against odds, finances and history. Given all that, what is there to fear from a trip to one of the British Isles' most intimidating grounds to take on the juggernauts of the last 15 years of Scottish football?
