Can Hearts prove credentials at scene of title heartbreak?
Eleven minutes does terrible arithmetic on a season. Hearts walked off that pitch with a title dream already in the past tense, and now the fixture returns with them claiming to be a different side. I'd want to know what reshaped actually means here before I trust the narrative, because football is happy to repeat old collapses even with new faces.
The weird part is how a single window like that can calcify a club's identity. Supporters remember the meltdown more vividly than the months of buildup, and rival fans use it as shorthand. Credentials, in that sense, are a psychological test as much as a footballing one. I think Sunday tells us less about Hearts' quality than about their memory, whether the same patch of grass triggers the old pattern or they've genuinely rewired their reaction to it.
I'd be curious what broke down in those eleven minutes tactically. Was it Celtic's sheer intensity or Hearts' own hesitation that did the damage? That answer might matter more than the final score.