A Hearts title win will not change our game. People need a sense of perspective here.

Last night, I said that if Hearts win this title, I will be able to handle it as a Celtic supporter because they will have earned it. But I still have grave doubts that this is going to be anything other than a one-season wonder.

Martin O’Neill said today that he thinks Hearts will be good for Scottish football and that they can become title challengers every year. I’m sorry to disagree with the boss, but he is 100 per cent wrong.

I still don’t see any sign that this is a lasting thing.

Hearts may very well get over the finish line, but as I’ve said before and before and before, there are extenuating circumstances up the wazoo here.

They did not have to play European football. They did not undergo any kind of major internal strife. Both ourselves and the club across the city have had horrific seasons, us by our own standards and them because that’s just what they do over there.

In any other year, we would have been over the hills and far away. The only question would have been whether Hearts could have maintained a challenge for second place.

Next season, when they have to play European games every other week, that is when the bubble will almost certainly burst.

That is when the dream some people have, that this may last longer than a single season, runs into the hard reality of what we are actually watching here.

A season of exceptional circumstances. A perfect storm in which both halves of Glasgow have been in absolute meltdown.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a window here. Ibrox does not look as if it can pull itself out of its troubles any time soon, and we are facing a major summer rebuilding job. I still don’t know where we even start.

But tackling European and domestic football is a task Hearts will not be able to handle at this level right away.

That is not a slight on where they are. It is just the cold, hard truth of it. You cannot expect a club which is not built for that kind of workload to compete on multiple fronts and sustain a title challenge at the same time. It does not happen like that.

Restructuring your club so that it can do that is the work of years.

People are going to have to be patient if Hearts are going to get there. Other clubs might fancy the same journey too. Aberdeen, Hibs and Motherwell have all shown that they can produce good academy players.

This might be a footballing environment in which a side that gets the academy right has a real opportunity.

But European football brings complications and complexities that require major infrastructure. That is where the gap becomes obvious.

This is where the two Glasgow clubs have a massive advantage over everyone else in this league. The infrastructure is already built. We can cope with squad sizes of 20-plus players, backed by a deep pool of B team players and academy prospects if we need to go that far into the structure, as Celtic have had to do this season.

That is the kind of depth you need if you are going to compete.

Even with all those advantages, we have struggled when injuries hit us, and when we lost key players who were not properly replaced. Ibrox has struggled even more, with an ever-expanding squad that still does not meet the standards their fans demand.

This stuff is hard. It is incredibly hard, even with the right infrastructure, to put players into games every three days and still expect them to win them all.

I think it would be good for Scottish football to see a genuine third force emerge. Something that can cement itself and challenge every season. That would be excellent.

But people underestimate the scale of what that will take.

It will take more than one good season, where a perfect confluence of events artificially creates the conditions for a title race. It will take something sustained. Something that lasts. Something built on a solid foundation.

That is not what we are seeing here yet.

Hearts deserve enormous credit for where they have got to. To do what they’ve done this season takes something. It takes the right combination of good players, a manager who can organise a squad, proper backing from the people behind him, and a little bit of luck along the way.

They have done what no club in Scotland has been able to do for 40 years in terms of sustaining a genuine league challenge against the Glasgow clubs.

Even if Hearts don’t get over the line, they deserve credit because they have consistently been able to beat everyone else. They are the best of the rest by a considerable distance, and any team that wants to challenge over the long term needs to establish itself in exactly that way first.

This season, Hearts look the part. They look far better than every other team at their level. They look capable of beating anyone on their day, and that is massive. It should not be underestimated.

But add a Celtic revival to the mix next season, if that is what we are going to see. Add a new sense of purpose at our club, and perhaps at other clubs like Aberdeen and Hibs. Add Motherwell, if they can keep their manager and their squad together.

Then throw Hearts into European football every three days with their current squad depth.

I don’t believe there will be a title challenge from outside Glasgow next year, or for many years to come. It is still a long way from being able to say that the game here has changed in an irrevocable way.

There is a fairy-tale element to the way people talk about Hearts. I did not think it was likely they would get this far. I did not believe they would be three games from being champions.

So yes, I could be completely wrong about all of this. But I don’t think I am, because this is just not how football usually works.

If Hearts finish as champions this season, next season brings expectation from day one. It brings pressure from day one. It brings more games than they have played in a single campaign for a very long time, possibly ever.

That is not just a big ask. It is gargantuan.

I wish more people were viewing this with the necessary realism, because it is not doing anyone any favours to pretend we are seeing some definitive, game-changing event.

Scottish football should not bank on this transforming its fortunes, because anyone buying into that is likely to be sorely disappointed.

If Hearts win it, a lot of people will be very, very happy. They will be entitled to be. It will be an achievement for the ages.

But nobody should lose their sense of perspective.

It may change the name on the trophy for one season.

It will not fundamentally change the ground we are standing on.

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