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When the race resumes on Saturday, the hope is that it will continue to be more than a two-horse one. If Hearts extend their run to seven victories with successful visits to Livingston and Inverness in the next fortnight, they will come into their encounter with Rangers at Tynecastle on September 24 hoping to catch McLeish’s squad preoccupied by their impending visit to a deserted San Siro to face Inter Milan. The distraction of Europe has already been removed from Celtic’s sights, which must now be firmly focused on regaining the title. Gordon Strachan’s team is still in the throes of transition and its next two fixtures, home to Aberdeen then away to Hibs, will ask more questions than last week’s flawed 4-0 romp at Dunfermline did. Aberdeen have triumphed at Celtic Park in the last two seasons, and defeated Rangers 3-2 at home last month. Hibs, meanwhile, have beaten Celtic and Rangers on their last two visits to Glasgow.

Hearts will need more of such help if they are continue to lead the way. With each reverse they suffer, the Old Firm seem more vulnerable to clubs who are not dreading trips to Celtic Park or Ibrox as much as they used to. “The challenge can’t just come from one side and I don’t believe it will,” said Steven Pressley, Hearts’ captain. “In order for the league to become far more competitive there needs to be a strong Hearts, a strong Hibs, a strong Dundee United, a strong Aberdeen, and that seems to be the case. Hopefully because of that, we’ll get a far more exciting Premierleague, the monotony will disappear and the crowds will start returning again. That’s what has happened at Tynecastle in recent weeks. I think there is more interest about the league but it is about sustaining it. Come January or February, if we’re still in the hunt, we’ll consider ourselves serious contenders, but certainly not after five league games.

“An encouraging aspect is that we added another couple of new faces this week, that for me signals an intent. I think when you are winning and you’re adding to the squad, then there is a genuine belief that the club wants to move in the right direction. When I first joined in 1998, the first league game of the season was home to Rangers under the new Dick Advocaat regime and we won 2-1 at Tynecastle that day. Then we went to up to Tannadice the following week and pretty much sold out the entire away end. Since then I can never remember doing that again until we did it several weeks ago. That’s because the feelgood factor has returned at the club.”

The Old Firm have enough problems getting into the Champions League group stages without a domestic revolt to contend with. If Hearts are still close to them in January, then the transfer window will be interesting indeed. With their places in the Champions League qualifiers threatened, Celtic and Rangers may have to renege on their previous pledges to drive down spending. Hearts, meanwhile, will have to consider if they should up the ante again with another raft of arrivals.

Although superficially comparable to Chelsea’s breaking of the Arsenal-Manchester United monotony in England, because the funds of an eastern European benefactor have helped it along, the outlay at Tynecastle is not on the same scale. In his first two months at Chelsea, Roman Abramovich spent £200m, £90m on clearing debt and £110m on new players. Vladimir Romanov, in contrast, has merely moved Hearts’ debts of £19.6m from Halifax Bank of Scotland to Ukio, his own banking group, on lower interest rates. The wage funds he has put at the disposal of his manager, George Burley, have come with the caveat that he will have a say in signings, and the only fee Hearts have paid so far is £300,000 for Michal Pospisil. Rudi Skacel, Edgaras Jankauskas and Samuel Cammazola are loans while Panagiotis Fyssas, who played for Greece at Euro 2004, and Ibrahim Tall are Bosmans.

“I obviously spoke with Mr Romanov in January/February time and he talked about his intentions in terms of moving forward to challenge the Old Firm,” said Pressley. “I wasn’t entirely sure how we were going to do that. I wondered if it would be bringing young players like Saul Mikoliunas and Deividas Cesnauskis and looking to develop them and it would be a longer-term strategy, but bringing in guys of Edgaras Jankauskas’s quality shows the intent that he has. It’s not just him, I look at the left-back we just signed (Fyssas) and he’s got fantastic pedigree. To be able to attract those kind of players to the club is great.”

According to Phil Anderton, the Hearts chief executive, Romanov’s reaction to the 4-0 derby win over Hibs was not, ‘Wow, that was good’, but ‘Ok, what do we do next?’. “In January, and even before then, we will be assessing where we are and saying, ‘How much money have we got? This is an opportunity to go on’,” added Anderton. “If we ’re top, which nobody is taking for granted, and the manager says he wants to strengthen four or five positions, then why not? But you’d need to speak to Vladimir Romanov about that because it’s his money, not mine. He’s got to decide how much he wants to spend.” Romanov has not asked his own financial director how much he has put into Hearts so far, apparently.

As important as the incoming players has been Hearts’ ability to say no to Old Firm offers for their Scottish internationals. Paul Hartley and Andy Webster might be returning from Walter Smith’s squad to Celtic and Rangers if bids had not been rebuffed. Previous challenges often foundered when the best players at the clubs making them were cherrypicked by the Old Firm or English sides. The last time the title went outside Glasgow, to Aberdeen in 1985, was before Graeme Souness’s arrival at Rangers a year later started to push their wages to levels that other clubs could not afford, and Celtic sluggishly followed suit after Fergus McCann rescued them from bankruptcy in 1994.

Pressley, who turns 32 next month, considers himself a “late developer” and feels his Scotland experience, which could see him win his 25th cap against Norway on Wednesday, has made him a better defender. He was a raw youngster coming through at Rangers as they assembled their run of nine consecutive titles. “People looking at it from the outside don’t realise that expectation is difficult to live with,” he said. “The Old Firm experience it all the time and if we continue to progress then that is something that will grow and will be new to a lot of us, and we’ll need to learn to handle it. It’s a different level of pressure and hopefully we have the characteristics to deal with that, but only time will tell.”

Anderton, too, is circumspect. “There’s nothing better than proving people wrong,” he said. “Equally, I fully understand why people will be sceptical because Rangers and Celtic are institutions with massive supports and you can see that it is rare for somebody else to come along and challenge, but it can happen. You look at the Blackburns, the Chelseas, even teams like Bolton.”

A previous challenge by Hearts petered out as the pressure grew in the spring of 1998, although there was the considerable consolation of the Scottish Cup after a 2-1 win over Rangers. “I wasn’t around the club at the time so I don’t know exactly what went on, but it’s difficult to sustain a challenge to the Old Firm because they have strength in depth,” added Pressley. “I could be sat here next time, talking about trying to catch them again. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”

In the national interest, the rest of us will hope that Hearts can stay ahead of the Old Firm for as long as possible.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk