A phrase that best describes this season’s absorbingly chaotic Scottish Premiership title race? How about make it make sense.
This Bank Holiday weekend — with just four league games remaining — Hearts fans want rivals Hibernian to WIN against Celtic on Sunday, but Hibs fans heading to Easter Road want their team to LOSE to prevent Hearts taking another step towards winning the league, and a worst nightmare for anyone on the green side of Edinburgh.
Then, 24 hours later, Celtic fans will be hoping Old Firm rivals Rangers can stop table-topping Hearts from winning at Tynecastle.
In short: Hearts fans backing Hibs, Celtic fans backing Rangers, and Hibs fans not backing their own team.
The script is wacky, hard to believe — but entirely in keeping with this utterly bonkers campaign. And, true to form, the stakes are just as absurd: this weekend, Hearts have the chance to effectively eliminate one of their biggest rivals from contention.
In the same way kids’ TV show Sesame Street is ‘brought to you by’ various letters, numbers and songs in each episode, this year’s Scottish Premiership title battle is brought to you by the letters H, M, F, C, the numbers 66, 20, 19, 86, and a whole host of musical anthems from the eighties.
It’s been 66 years since Heart of Midlothian Football Club last won Scotland’s biggest domestic prize, but they have only been off the top of the table for around 20 hours since the end of September.
They have not been this close to winning the league since May 1986, when they lost the title to Celtic on goal difference after being just eight minutes away from picking up the solitary point they needed at Dundee.
– Hearts, Celtic, Rangers? Who’s going to win the title?
– Weekend predictions: Can Man United beat Liverpool?
Boys Don’t Cry was riding high in the UK charts on that fateful day 40 years ago, but the seminal image from Dens Park was of maroon-clad males in tears on the Tayside terracing following referee Bill Crombie’s final whistle. Meanwhile, 70 miles away in Paisley, jubilant Celtic fans were celebrating after watching their team beat St Mirren 5-0. That result, coupled with substitute Albert Kidd’s two late goals for Dundee that brought an end to Hearts’ 27-game unbeaten run, handed Celtic the title on goal difference.
Four decades later, The Final Countdown is on. With just four rounds of fixtures remaining, only four points separate the three teams in the hunt to win the league.
If I Could Turn Back Time, you’d be going back to 1984-85 to see the last title won by a team other than Celtic or Rangers, Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen.
But Against All Odds, the unfancied Hearts, last champions in 1960, have taken the fight to the Glasgow giants this season. When the 2025-26 Scottish Premiership betting market opened in May 2025, Hearts were available to back at 150/1 to win the league. Compare that with the odds of Celtic [1/3] and Rangers [2/1], bookmakers — along with everyone else in British football — expected a two-horse race north of the border.
It’s all very Radio Gaga to see … OK, this one needs more of an explanation.
Claudio Braga arrived at Hearts last summer from Norway with little fanfare, but it didn’t take long for the Portuguese forward to acquire a chant — thanks to supporter Calum Mackenzie, who came up with the idea on his lunch break and shared a rough voice note with friends “just for a laugh.”
… You have the pace
You have the power
You’re yet to have your finest hour …
All we need is CLAUDIO BRAGA.
By the following day, it had taken on a life of its own, and footage of the song has since racked up more than six million views on social media.
“That’s me done, retired from the game now,” Mackenzie told Hearts podcast Scarves Around The Funnel.
If only there was another huge hit by Queen that Calum could rejig this summer if Hearts Are The Champions …
If what we have seen so far this season is anything to go by, then one thing is for sure: there will still be plenty of twists and turns to come, even with so little time left.
It promises to be a Manic Monday at Tynecastle when the league leaders face third-placed Rangers. And with both halves of the Old Firm trying to hit Hearts with their best shot over the next few weeks, can Derek McInnes and his squad deal with the heat of the moment?
The signs are promising. Hearts have spent 31 of the 34 rounds thus far as Scottish Premiership leaders and have far from buckled under the pressure; instead, producing many of the clutch moments champions do. Twenty-three of their 73 points have come thanks to goals in the 82nd minute or later, and 16 of their points have been won after coming back from losing positions.
When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going.
Rangers and Celtic won’t give up, with managers Danny Rohl and Martin O’Neill targeting four near-perfect weekends between now and the end of the season. A last-game showdown between Celtic and Hearts at Celtic Park still looks tantalising.
Before then comes a Hibs-Celtic clash and a showdown at Tynecastle, on a weekend where Scottish football fans are tying themselves in knots.
Make it make sense?
Better yet — don’t.
Just enjoy this title race while it lasts.
