{"id":437288,"date":"2026-01-25T21:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T21:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/437288\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T21:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T21:49:07","slug":"intoxicating-title-fight-impossible-to-call-as-hearts-refuse-to-buckle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/437288\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Intoxicating title fight impossible to call as Hearts refuse to buckle&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Their gap over Celtic remains at six but only four over Rangers, the shark circling the waters at the top, their teeth restored under Danny Rohl. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rangers have come from chaos, humiliation and fury and have moved into serious contention.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It seems completely incongruous a club the size of Rangers, its life spent under a gigantic microscope, could possibly move quietly into contention, but that&#8217;s the reality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It only seems like five minutes ago since the boos at Ibrox could be heard in all corners of the country, where laughter was the dominant noise. Now, relatively speaking, we hear the sound of purring from that club.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This league is one of the greatest of our times; impossible to call but oh so easy to enjoy. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Celtic folk will feel they should still be locked together with Rangers on points and would be had it not been for that red card, a rarity for them in domestic football.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They will be incensed about the decision to send off Trusty for the denial of an obvious goalscoring opportunity when leading 2-1. Was it all that obvious? Martin O&#8217;Neill thought no. Derek McInnes thought yes. Funny, that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It did change things, though. Trusty had gone just 10 minutes when Braga had his chance to level it; point blank and a goal to all the world. Kasper Schmeichel denied him. Only six minutes remained but, actually, there were another eight on top. The temptation was to cheer when the board went up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The equaliser sent Tynecastle into an advanced state of delirium. Just like the first time, the source of Celtic&#8217;s problems was their remarkable inability to deal with deliveries into their box.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Along with their angst about the red card some honesty about their defending should form part of their analysis. When Oisin McEntee nodded down at the back post, Braga smashed it home and sent Celtic back down the road in pain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This league has a way to run. Any one of the top three could win it and any one of Falkirk and Motherwell could have a say in deciding who does because, on their day, they&#8217;re capable of taking points off the sides above them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That&#8217;s what makes this season so intoxicating; so much jeopardy, so much unpredictability and so many teams who have come to the party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Celtic thought they had Hearts on Sunday. If they focus solely on the red card then they&#8217;re missing the point &#8211; the Jambos, it must be obvious to all, are not getting the jitters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Their gap over Celtic remains at six but only four over Rangers, the shark circling the waters at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-437288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}