Hearts have surfed the waves of Celtic’s Perfect Storm.

Regular readers and people who know me will understand that I like to try to puzzle things out. Watching this season unravel as a Celtic supporter, one of the things I’ve been trying to work out is whether Hearts are having a genuinely exceptional campaign, or whether we’re here simply because we’ve had a diabolically bad one.

Of course, the fact remains that both things can be true at the same time and that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in.

I’ve looked back over recent title-winning campaigns, and even further back across the last fifteen years. There have only been a handful of occasions where the points total required to win the league has dropped significantly.

This season is not entirely unique, but it is certainly unusual, and the pattern is clear enough when you study it.

The year after we went Invincible is a useful comparison. We won the treble again, but with a surprisingly low points total; 82.

I remember that season well. We dropped points towards the end once we had already secured the title, and because the league was effectively over, nobody paid much attention. But if that race had been tighter, if something had still been at stake, we might well have been caught.

That is the key point, and that context matters.

This season is different.

Hearts are likely to finish somewhere around the 80-point mark. That is a significant achievement, especially in a league where consistency outside Glasgow has historically been difficult to maintain.

If you’ve read this site long enough, you’ll know I’ve said before that one day a club would put together a run like this and make themselves a genuine contender.

Because ultimately, it is simple. If one side outside Glasgow consistently beats the other sides around them – which is what no one side has been able to do in a long time – you are going to give yourself a chance. No club has been set up for that, not before now. Hearts have hit their form streak and done something genuinely impressive.

This year, the planets have aligned perfectly for them … and part of that is that not only have they had the confidence that comes from a good start but that they’ve been able to beat the Glasgow sides at home and go to both Celtic Park and Ibrox and get big results.

Yet the simple fact is that the foundations of Hearts’ campaign were laid last season and they came about because of the club’s own poor form.

They did not qualify for Europe.

While Celtic and the club across the city were dealing with qualifiers and additional fixtures, Hearts had a clearer run. They also exited the League Cup early, which meant they avoided those latter-stage games deep into November and December.

That matters more than people think.

From August through to January, they were able to maintain momentum without the same physical and mental strain. Even without what has happened in Glasgow, they would have been well placed. But when you add what has happened at Celtic and Ibrox into the mix, you start to see how unusual this season really is.

This is what I would describe as a perfect storm.

The term itself comes from the 1991 storm off the east coast of the United States, where multiple weather systems combined to create something far more destructive than any one of them alone. Sebastian Junger’s brilliant book of the same name (which they made into a very good movie) shows how the three separate weather fronts converged and created the recipe for the disaster. The same principle applies here.

Hearts’ favourable circumstances have combined with simultaneous collapses at Celtic and Ibrox to produce a title race. It is an almost unique confluence of events.

Over the last five seasons, the league has typically required over 90 points to win. Our 87-point total in 2018–19 would have been enough to win this title comfortably. The same applies to the 86 points from 2015–16, both of which would have been enough to crown us champions for the fifth season in a row.

There are exceptions.

As I said a moment ago, Rodgers second season in his first spell saw us win the treble with 82 points. That would have put this title on a similar knife edge, although we would not have taken our foot off the gas the way we did.

The COVID season finished on 80, although we likely would have exceeded 90 had it been completed. Those seasons stand out precisely because they are not the norm.

This one belongs in that category.

But even within that, there is a distinction to make. This is not comparable to something like Leicester. Leicester dominated their league and won it by ten clear points. That was sustained excellence over the course of a full campaign.

What we have here is something very different.

We have two traditionally dominant sides underperforming at the same time, while another club benefits from a favourable set of circumstances and produces a very strong campaign. Even then, with seven games to go, there are only five points separating the top three.

That tells you everything you need to know.

None of this is to diminish what Hearts have done. By their standards, this has been an exceptional season. They have shown consistency and resilience that we have not, and they have taken full advantage of the opportunity in front of them.

But context still matters.

This is not a fundamental shift in Scottish football’s balance of power. It does not mark the beginning of a new era. Instead, it reflects a convergence of circumstances that will not be repeated in quite this way.

Next season will look very different.

Hearts will have European football. They will face more games, greater expectations, and increased pressure. They will need a bigger squad and will have to manage resources across multiple competitions.

Over time, changes in European competition structures may offer clubs like Hearts more opportunities to grow. Regular group-stage participation could eventually allow them to build something more sustainable, something that might one day make this kind of challenge repeatable.

But that is a long way off.

What we are seeing this season looks increasingly like a one-off. A perfect storm. A year where everything aligned for one club while everything fell apart for others.

Hearts have ridden that wave superbly.

If they go on to win the title, they will deserve enormous credit for it. But nobody should mistake this for anything more than what it is.

Because next season, the conditions that made this possible will not exist.

And that is when the fairy tale ends.

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