It wasn't supposed to last.
When Heart of Midlothian flew out of the blocks in August last year, many recalled Aberdeen doing the same the previous season before their form nosedived. But for a Scottish Cup win, the Dons have still to recover.
Rewinding to the eve of the most recent campaign, Tony Bloom was mocked for suggesting that not only could Hearts win the league within 10 years, they could split the Old Firm this very season. Former Scotland international and Rangers midfielder Charlie Adam hit back on the Warm-Up, declaring there was no way Hearts could finish second. Rangers and Celtic also use analytics, he added.
After going undefeated for the first 12 Scottish Premiership matches of 2025/26, many expected a similar drop-off to that experienced by Aberdeen 12 months before.
A 3-0 win at Rugby Park felt like a statement performance at the time. That didn’t stop pundit Charlie Mulgrew from saying during the live coverage at the end of the game that he thought Hearts would fall away at some point. Struggling to be heard above the celebrating away end as the words left his mouth.
We wrote at the start of November, after 11 games unbeaten, why this season’s pretenders were capable of sustaining the challenge. We pointed to factors such as the depth of the Hearts squad, their experienced manager, the underlying data, the decline of Celtic and Rangers’ poor start.
"You'll finish fifth," was a common retort to anyone of a Hearts persuasion. Which just so happened to be where the Dons finished at the conclusion of the 2024/25 campaign.
In a stroke of irony, Hearts’ first defeat of the league campaign came at Pittodrie just a couple of weeks after that article mentioned above went to print.
That’s when a mocked-up image of the Hearts crest inside a bubble being burst first started to circulate. Dons fans led the charge, indulging in schadenfreude while seeing it as a turning point in their season. The form table was shifting, we were told.
That win left Aberdeen eighth. They went on to finish ninth.
Many who thought that Hearts were on the way down in November would have felt vindicated when they drew their next two league games ahead of their first trip to Celtic Park of the season, away at Motherwell and at home to Kilmarnock.
That meant facing the champions on their own patch with the chance of relinquishing the lead had they lost the game. Hearts were sure to start sliding down the table, right?
Wrong. Hearts comfortably dispatched Wilfried Nancy’s men – Kieran Tierney’s injury-time goal a mere consolation in the 2-1 win.
Then the goalposts started to shift, the first of many times over the course of the season.
Hearts were only doing well because the two Glasgow giants weren’t at their best, some said. A refrain that was oft-repeated and that continues to be deployed in debate to this day.
However, that ignored the impressive displays in the other eight games Hearts had won, in a range of manners: from dominating to come-from-behind victories.
“Hearts will finish Xth” continued, though people were now unsure which league position to put on it. But the slide down the table would start soon, that much was certain.
Even the charge that Rangers and Celtic were having poor seasons was only half true.
There is no doubt that the champions declined dramatically until the end of the season when seven wins in a row won the title. It was also true that both had changed managers in the same season for the first time. Celtic did so twice.
However, Rangers finished the 2025/26 campaign with 72 points. Just three fewer than the previous season. A season that saw them win two and draw three of their top-six fixtures, as opposed to the paltry one win and four defeats they managed this time around.
Moreover, Rangers have managed a solitary league title in the last 16 years. Their season was on par with many of their others from the past 10 years.
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Another argument was that Hearts were only doing well because of a consistent starting XI. Once injuries and suspensions kicked in, they would struggle.
The theory was tested to the extreme when, boy, did they get hit by injuries. Two of their most influential players, Lawrence Shankland and Cammy Devlin, were ruled out for eight weeks in January.
That meant the duo missed a pivotal game at home to Celtic, along with Beni Baningime who was suspended. Hearts came out with a credible 2-2 draw.
A few weeks later, at home to Hibernian, Hearts were missing Craig Halkett through suspension on top of still being without Shankland and Devlin. The spine of their side. They won 1-0, giving them an eight-point lead at the top of the league.
Naysayers continued to proclaim it would not last. “They’ll finish third,” was now the cry. Some went further and said Motherwell, the form side in the league by this point, would overtake them and Hearts would slip to fourth.
Hearts’ injuries barely let up for the rest of the season. Shankland and Devlin returned but the latter suffered another injury and was never fully fit for the remainder of the campaign.
Oisin McEntee was in and out before his season was over. Tomas Magnusson was due to return from a fractured cheekbone before his season ended with a thigh injury. Harry Milne missed a large chunk of this calendar year. Stuart Findlay sat out for four matches just ahead of the post-split fixtures. Record signing Ageu was ruled out for the season after making just one start.
Still, Hearts remained top of the league until the final day, when the injuries finally caught up with them and they finished the season at Celtic Park with a paucity of options in the centre of the park.
Even as we entered the split, with just three points separating the top three, many of a non-Hearts persuasion seemed to think that the big two’s might would eventually see the Gorgie outfit finish third.
The season ended in crushing disappointment for everyone associated with Hearts – and the bad news has barely let up. From KMI panel decisions backing up what everyone could already see to a first-hand account – pardon the pun – and Hearts losing their captain and talisman to a direct rival.
There are many hurdles to overcome, not least replacing Shankland and other key members of the squad, but there is no doubt that, in some respects, it was a successful season. Rising from seventh to second in the space of 12 months cannot be sniffed at.
Tall-poppy syndrome is real in Scotland. In the whole of the UK, in fact. We can all be guilty of it. And, in the end, they were right, Hearts didn’t win the league. But there were a damn sight closer to winning it than even dropping to third. Still, there were charges that Hearts’ bottle had crashed on that final day.
That’s despite helping to make it the most exciting title race in a generation, a record points tally and taking their place in the Champions League qualifiers for the first time in 20 years. Some people just can’t be convinced.
Even a few weeks before these words have been written, the season just gone for Hearts is being branded a one-off. “Rangers and Celtic will never be this poor again,” they say. That could be true, although it would be surprising if both managed to sort out all of their issues in just one summer.
And, if the track record of the clubs Jamestown Analytics is involved with is anything to go by, Hearts will challenge again in future. Even if next season they take a step back from how close they came this time.
Or, to defer to someone more authoritative on the subject, as Bloom told Talksport last week: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The Hearts fans are absolutely fantastic, and we will be back next season with a bang. We want to be competing to win the league every single season that we possibly can."
