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Fear And Loathing At Tynecastle. Sevco Are Stunned As Stendel Makes It Advantage Celtic.

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Oh the misery.

Oh the pain.

Oh the complete collapse of momentum and the creep of fear.

Sevco have been beaten at Tynecastle, by the club rock bottom of the league.

We’re five points clear, five goals better off, and although the NewCo has a game in hand this feels like a big, big day.

The defeat at Celtic Park has been erased. Gerrard’s club looks rocky.

As good as it was seeing Hearts win, it was even better seeing the pained, agonised face of Kris Boyd in the Sky studio. That might well go down as my highlight of the week, depending on how the rest of it pans out. But it’s a damned good start to it.

From the moment the game kicked off today, Gerrard’s rag-bag mob looked out of ideas.

When they scored it was easy to imagine them hanging on and taking three points although they hadn’t deserved it. But this was not a Craig Levein team, who would certainly have folded the hand and collapsed like a house of cards.

Daniel Stendel has made astute decisions in the transfer market – and the biggest of them paid off in spades today – and he did what few other managers, including our own, have done in this campaign; he spread his nostrils, scented blood and went in for the kill.

Gerrard’s team cannot handle the pressure of being on top. They catch a glimpse of the summit and fall all the way down the mountain. Their squad is not as good as many think it is, and they are mentally weak when that is what champions need.

The media has been slabbering all over this lot for months, and even if we’d beaten them at Celtic Park they’d have continued to. But this side was never all it was cracked up to be, and Gerrard is certainly not a patch on our own manager.

Their squad, too, lacks the range of options that ours has … and the window is almost shut and before this game they were adamant that they did not need to strengthen it. It is doubtful the money would be found if they wanted to now. But I think they need to pull a rabbit out of the hat in that regard; without it their fans will be furious.

Fear wafted off their footballers today. Loathing wafted out of the stands.

They have Ross County at the weekend, and then begins a series of crunch games. And yes, most of them are at Ibrox, but the reek of terror is in the air now, and Aberdeen, Hibs, Motherwell and Kilmarnock await them shortly. Morelos will be back, but that only promises more hilarity.

Celtic has the advantage again, and whilst we can all lament lost opportunities and what might have been, we are in the driving seat once more.

This is how titles are won.

Days like today are how challenges die.

What joy to see their pain.

What fun as reality sets in again.

Think you know our Polish players? Take the quiz below or by clicking on this link to find out … 

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How many Polish footballers have played for Celtic?

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