Are Hearts serious title challengers?
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What is the context and preview for Rangers vs Hearts at Tynecastle?
Hello everyone and welcome to a weekend briefing here at the Rangers Review, tidying you over until tomorrow's powder keg clash at Tyne Castle. Rangers heading over the M8 to Gorgie to take on league leaders Harps and to give us a bit of insight into Sunday's opponents. It brings me great joy to say that we're joined by Craig Cairns from the Harps Standard. Craig, how goes it?
Very well, yes. Can't really complain about the season so far. How's things with yourself?
Yeah, hunky-dory. A lot brighter, a lot rosier than certainly what it was a good few weeks ago, that's for sure. Rangers seem to be stringing a few results together, which proved to be difficult at the beginning of the season. But yeah, certainly makes for an interesting game on Sunday. It looks like we may have title race after all given well Rangers picking up a few points Hearts of course leading the way in Celtic hitting the self-destruct button which has been pretty enjoyable for the blue side of Glasgow that's for sure but in terms of the jambos Craig at the start of the season if you'd spoke to any supporter at the times in Hearts would be top of the league come the end of the year don't think many would believe you would they?
No, definitely not. I was in the room when Tony Bloom said to a room full of Hearts supporters that not only would he be disappointed if Hearts didn't win the league in the next 10 years, he said that the top two could be disrupted as quickly as this season. And there was a... including myself there was sort of like a sharp intake of breath everything else he had said up to that point including winning the league over the 10 years was sort of applauded and welcomed but that was the one thing that people were like wait a minute um hearts are a bottom six club as it stands so yeah i did not see this coming whatsoever i did expect good things from derrick mckinnis i thought everything had fallen into place with hearts not being in europe and um
having a sort of pre-season with the League Cup. So I expected a positive start going into the league, but nowhere near as good as this.
What's been the secret then? Because we know about the headline players, like Claudio Braga, Kiza Redis has been top class as well. Laurence Shankland's up top. But why have they been performing as well as they have been, Craig? Can you put your finger on it?
I would say three main factors.
Who is Craig Cairns and how does he sum up Hearts' surprising start?
One I've just mentioned is Derek McInnes. He was definitely the type of manager that Hearts needed to come in. I mean, I'm not somebody who's wedded to someone who knows the Scottish League and all that kind of stuff, but it's definitely what Hearts needed in the summer and it's been proven correctly because I think Hearts have picked up points that a manager without that Scottish football experience maybe wouldn't have got. I also think that players is the most important thing in football and Hearts have not only... One used Jamestown Analytics to unearth some gems. You've mentioned one there in Claudio Braga, Alexandros Kizaridis, although he's not been quite as good as the start of the season.
There's another one. And then you've got players like Thomas Magnusson coming through just now as well. Players who have had to bide their time and there's more of those in reserve as well. But the third factor has been the players that were already there. We knew that Hearts had a good squad and was underperforming last season, but there's a good core that have been there. And I'm talking like four, five, six seasons now. Devlin, Halkett, these kind of players, Shankland, who are all performing much better than they were last season as well. So those three things together have all sort of like a perfect mix for where Hearts are right now.
Yeah, I think deservedly leave the table, of course. Everyone kept saying they'll stumble at some point, a la Aberdeen of last season. A few draws recently, but I think that win at Parkhead really gave them a bit of a shot in the arm, Craig. Did it not? Maybe that was a huge game for them to go there and win that game and kick on, of course, a good win last weekend against Falkirk as well off the back of it.
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