Stephen McGowan thinks Celtic fans are elitist on Hearts. We’re just smarter than him.

This morning Stephen McGowan is back where he feels most at home, up on a pulpit, sneering at ordinary supporters and, as usual, making himself look like a prize fool while he does it. His message to Celtic fans, and to the fans of the club across the city, is that everything in Scottish football has changed. He also claims that it is not all about us any longer.

Let’s take the central claim and why he feels compelled to make it.

He makes it because he thinks Celtic fans, and the fans across the city, are entitled, arrogant, elitist, out of touch, and interested only in ourselves and what is good for our teams. On every one of those counts, when it comes to Celtic fans at least, he is absolutely dead wrong.

The so-called media elites have sneered at us for years. One response to that was the creation of fan media. Celtic fan media cleans their clock year in, year out, especially on the issues they are too scared to touch.

Fan media is miles ahead of these people for one simple reason. We do not let the kind of thinking that grips almost everyone in the Scottish mainstream press dictate how we see the game. We do not rush to instant judgement.

Nor do we convince ourselves that one unusual season has somehow shifted the whole firmament of the game. We do not get overexcited because a player has scored ten SPFL goals, or because a manager has taken his club to fourth place in his first season. We take a longer view.

This idea that Scottish football is suddenly about three clubs instead of two is a nice fantasy. That McGowan has to try to frame Hearts as Scottish football nearly-men once before, by harking back to the George Burley era, is telling.

Look, I understand how he got here.

After all, this season has produced what only looks like a title race.

It is not arrogant to assume that the top two will be Celtic and the Ibrox club. That is an accurate reading of the landscape.

Even if it were not, nobody can seriously argue that Hearts are about to establish themselves as a permanent third force challenging for the title every season. The evidence simply does not exist. This season is the product of a unique set of circumstances.

This site has pointed out those circumstances before. Hearts have had a good year by their own standards in terms of games won and points accumulated. Hibs have not established themselves properly. Aberdeen have collapsed. Clubs like St Mirren, who have been riding high for a couple of years, have had a poor season. There is far more going on in this league than simply the top three.

Hearts did not make the latter stages of the cup competitions.

They did not have to play European football.

For many months, they played one game a week while ourselves and the Ibrox club slogged through cup ties, European ties and domestic football all at once. On top of that, we had large numbers of players away on international duty at various times. This worked the Celtic squad into the ground without a break. When Hearts can compete with that schedule and still put up a fight, then some of us will be more inclined to believe things have changed.

The crazy presumption at the heart of all this, of course, is that Hearts are going to finish first or second.

Again, there are extenuating circumstances. The Ibrox club had a dreadful start to the season and their form has been erratic throughout.

Everyone reading this knows what happened to Celtic.

We inflicted so many wounds on ourselves that it is a miracle we are still standing. In fact, it is a miracle we are still in a title race. There will never again be a season where both Glasgow clubs are in such absolute turmoil at the same time.

Still, the basic fact remains that nothing has really changed.

You have a side which will, in all probability, finish third and which, as I pointed out, did not make the latter stages of the cup competitions. That is a normal, ordinary Hearts year. The title challenge says more about what was going on with the Glasgow clubs than it does about them.

Their form has been good, but only by their own standards.

The fact that both Glasgow clubs are having exceptionally bad seasons and are still in this tells its own story.

It is not arrogance or Glasgow elitism to say this. It is simply an acknowledgement of fact. If Hearts had been slugging it out with us consistently for three or four years and then staged this title run, it would be more or less expected.

In that case, it would have become routine.

You would not dismiss it so readily.

But they have not been. Hearts did not even finish in a European place last season. That is why they did not have to worry about Europe this year. This has one-season wonder written all over it, and the real wonder is that more people do not acknowledge that. Instead, we get sneered at for saying it, for refusing to get carried away, and for not being convinced that it means anything lasting.

All season long I have said that Hearts’ title challenge would falter at some point.

What does it matter whether that happened in the 20th week or the 31st?

I was never convinced it had the legs to go the distance.

I still do not think it will. If people want to argue that everything in Scottish football has changed, then wait until it has actually changed before trying to make that case. Wait until Hearts have engraved their name on the silverware and then start talking. If your argument boils down to Hearts having a good season and finishing third, I would say that sounds like a pretty average Hearts season.

Nor is it some kind of sacrilege against football to make the obvious claim that a team full of players who have never won silverware will not naturally have the mentality of winners. Usually, if you know what you’re doing, you take a team that has never won anything, bring in a couple of proven winners, and let them lift the mentality of the rest until the first honour is secured. Then you build from there.

Who says so? Pretty much every successful manager who has ever coached in the game, from Brian Clough to Alex Ferguson. They all preach the same thing. Winning is a habit, and until you have that first honour, you are still nowhere.

If Hearts had looked like they were going to trouble anyone in the cup competitions, if they had reached even a semi-final or a final, you might have been able to say that this was part of an upward trend. They did not even get near one.

So no, it is not especially impressive.

Look at a team full of players who still have not won major honours and it is not hard to predict that they will eventually crack under the pressure of carrying a title tilt. I did not even think that was a particularly controversial claim, but apparently it is.

The only odd thing for McGowan is that Celtic fans are the ones making it.

But who else is going to?

The mainstream media does not want to. They are too busy living in the fantasy, in the fairy tale, to confront reality and discuss it in realistic terms.

Put all this in a realistic context, though, and everything I have said makes perfect sense. There is far more evidence to support our view than there is to support the one the media is pushing.

They will not admit that. They are saying that things have changed, and they are sticking to the story. When Hearts are languishing mid-table next season, forced to juggle the same responsibilities as the rest of us, maybe they will own up to it then.

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