It is a perfectly normal Saturday afternoon in Edinburgh city centre, by which I mean: Waverley station is packed and you are never more than six paces from bumping into the back of a tourist who has decided that a busy shopping street is the perfect place to stop with no warning to take four or five photographs of their friends. Or, better, some magnificent Georgian architecture.
Head down Princes Street, even more bustling than usual thanks to the gardens being shut after Storm Amy had raged rain and wind, and turn left at Haymarket station and you notice two things immediately: the foot traffic has subsided and all of it is walking in one direction. This is the start of the Maroon Mile, taking you all the way to Tynecastle Park.
Benson’s Bar and then the Tynecastle Arms are both doing a roaring trade, their outsides painted in the perfect home colour. The scarf sellers are getting going and there will be no half-and-halfing today, thank you very much.
On The Road 2025-26 – Match 13/60
Hearts vs Hibs
A possible new era for Scottish football – piece out Thursday. And a windy, chaotic, febrile Edinburgh derby with a late twist. pic.twitter.com/1LMBVNJSLT
— Daniel Storey (@danielstorey85) October 6, 2025
Men are wearing football shirts over jumpers and lots of women have on maroon tops or dresses. Many have scarves, for loyalty and warmth. Autumn has arrived in Scotland.
At 4.30pm, 75 minutes before kick-off, McLeod Road is shut just outside the Tynecastle nursery school, the route blocked by three police vans and officers on horses. Beyond them, a sea of green-and-white merchandise and khaki coats waits behind steel barriers to be allowed behind enemy lines.
Those home supporters who still plot a route through are treated with a cacophony of chants as punishment for their tardiness. All laugh as they go, revealing that they always planned it this way.
In the paved square outside the Main Stand, a media reporter is collecting video vox pops for a later montage. The questions are mostly gentle, but one causes wry smiles and nervous laughter: “Hearts are top of the league – can they stay there?”
There is no right answer; no fool will say no and no true supporter will display outward confidence before the derby.
The point stands: Hearts can go five points clear. Too often supporters of the Scottish Premiership’s other clubs have watched the Old Firm’s matches from a metaphorical distance, Celtic and Rangers taking turns to lead and chase for 40 years. In this half of Edinburgh, everybody will move a little closer to the edge of their seats when Celtic play on Sunday.
The atmosphere is predictably brilliant. Tynecastle’s stands appear closer to the pitch than usual, creating a claustrophobia that is reassuring because there is nowhere else you would rather be. The air is filled with noise but it also hangs heavy in the air rather than dissipating, as if nerves have somehow become a tangible cloud.
It is too early to tell just yet, but we might just be entering a new era for Scottish football and that applies whatever unravels and reveals itself between now and May.
For so long the cause celebre of English football’s interest in the Scottish Premiership was a question asked on repeat by those low on ideas: will Celtic and Rangers come down to play in England? It became an implicit solution to an absence of meaningful competition outside of the duopoly.
So what if the opposite happened instead?
In February 2024, BKFC, the vehicle through which Bill Foley bought Bournemouth, purchased a 25 per cent stake in Hibs for a reported £6m, the first such relationship in Scottish football.
Then, in June 2025, Brighton owner Tony Bloom’s company bought a 29 per cent stake in Hearts. Hearts had already been using Jamestown Analytics, another Bloom company, for their recruitment. Bloom has been bullish on his ambition: “disrupt the pattern of domination which has been in place for far too long.”
That makes this Edinburgh derby a landmark fixture in its storied history, perhaps even a south-coast derby with a twist (although I’m not stupid or brave enough to proffer that moniker to locals). The times they are a-changing, or at least that is the plan.
There may be some unease about embedding Scotland’s subservience to the English game, but then that is the fault of the inescapable financial reality. At the last count, Celtic’s turnover was six-to-nine times that of Hearts and Hibs and the wages of the Old Firm clubs were at least five times as high.
By any reasonable measure, without systemic change the chances of an Edinburgh club winning the Premier League stood somewhere between zero and nae chance.
You could reasonably argue that Scotland has long been behind the curve. The obvious comparisons are with Denmark and Norway, both with leagues ranked above the Scottish Premiership in Uefa’s coefficients and with an established pattern of identifying and recruiting young, cheap foreign talent before selling for profit.
Last season in the Scottish Premiership, 72 per cent of all playing minutes were given to those who represent Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland and three major British-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, USA).
Only two non-English-speaking countries (France and Netherlands) had more than five representatives, compared to 10 nations in Denmark’s Superliga.
There is a middle ground – nobody wants to lose the identity of the league – but the potential is obvious. Creating, implementing and maintaining worldwide (or even Europe-wide) recruitment networks is an expensive business. So leaning on the means and expertise of others is a sensible approach.
This summer, Hearts signed players from clubs in Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Italy, Slovakia, Iceland, Estonia and England. In January, Kazakhstani forward Islam Chesnokov will join from Tobol in his home country. For Saturday’s derby, four new signings are in the team and three more are on the bench.
Brazilian Ageu, the club’s record signing, will return from injury soon and everyone The i Paper speaks to is very excited about his potential. To put the financial gap into context, Hearts’ most expensive ever arrival doesn’t make the top 100 in Scottish Premiership history. That is split exactly equally: 50 Rangers, 50 Celtic.
For Hibs, the process has been slightly less pronounced – no Jamestown Analytics model here. But the three players who arrived for money this summer were a Togolese forward from a Swiss club, a Zambian midfielder from another Swiss club and an Austrian goalkeeper from TSV Hartberg in his home country. Gambian Alasana Manneh joined from OB in Denmark in January.
The Bloom dream has quickly been manifested. Derek McInnes, appointed in May, is yet to lose a match over 90 minutes since taking over (the exception being a penalty shootout group game defeat in the League Cup).
Hibs are a little more sticky under David Gray, but at the start of play they are a point off third place and are aiming to win three consecutive derbies for the first time in over 100 years.
The derby is everything I hoped for and wanted. Three sides of Tynecastle belt out “Glorious Hearts” before kick-off, with the away end’s usual response being more pithy: “F*** the Gorgies.”
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Storm Amy has mostly blown out, but the blustery cold wind is enough to give the whole thing a windswept aesthetic that fits perfectly with the fixture. The match is delayed for a few minutes while tin foil sheeting – used in a pre-match tifo – is cleared from the pitch front of the Gorgie Stand after being blown from the seats.
The game settles into its natural pattern. Hearts prefer to have more of the ball and push teams back. Alexandros Kyziridis, a Greek winger signed from Zemplin Michalovce, roams at will and is the constant answer when the home team seeks unpredictability and excitement.
Hibs prefer to soak up pressure and break quickly, but also have the long throws of left wing-back Jordan Obita to cause chaos in the gusts.
For the most part, Hibs’ plan works better. They have the best chance of the first half and Martin Boyle hits the underside of the bar in the second, before the same player has a goal ruled out for offside.
The home support is not exactly tetchy, but Tynecastle mithers a little about the lack of attacking intensity. Deep down they know that this is the plan; it’s just that derbies do funny things to first your tummy and then your sense of logic.
And then, just as the Hibs supporters are delighting in their team’s grit and the prospect of stopping this maroon-washed early season march, magic happens. Sabah Kerjota – an Albanian signed this summer after playing in Italy’s fourth tier – dips inside, produces a wonderful cross and Craig Halkett, the club’s longest-serving player, pokes home. The blend of Hearts old and new have combined at the death.
Celebrating our 1⃣5⃣0⃣th competitive victory over 𝓗𝓕𝓒 in a National Competition
— Heart of Midlothian FC (@JamTarts) October 5, 2025
pic.twitter.com/j5S6bdXL9Y
There is no better time to win a derby than exactly two minutes before its end, because it goes like this: one minute of limbs and celebratory joy, one minute of whistle-blowing and cheering every tackle and misplaced, desperate attempt of the opposition to redeem themselves, however many minutes you want of basking in heady, vindictive glory while the traditional songs of victory fill your world.
I immediately think of those pre-match vox pops and wonder how they might have shifted in tone were they conducted again on the way out. Nobody here wants to think of anything but today, for these moments don’t come along often enough. When the next home fixture is read out over the PA system, they cheer even though they know it anyway: Hearts vs Celtic.
On the way out of Tynecastle, something clicks in my mind: I wonder when the last time Hearts won a derby at Tynecastle in stoppage time was. I find a magnificent Hearts fan site and start to scroll through the seasons.
The answer appears to be 1936, when Alex M Anderson scored the winner in a 3-2 Wilson Cup final, an annual competition between the two main Edinburgh clubs between 1905 and 1946. So yes, we have witnessed history.
This is a very handy season to be good in the Scottish Premiership. Rangers are in crisis – sacking Russell Martin was the right move but they are already 11 points behind Hearts and who knows to where or who they turn next.
Celtic are still heavy title favourites but they too are in existential crisis with supporters deeply critical of the board’s lack of investment and Brendan Rodgers not far behind them. Both of the Old Firm clubs have seven more midweek European group games to navigate. Their own complacency may be more draining than the calendar.
They will be back, soon or eventually. The financial reality of this league means that the duopoly will take years to shift. They will always generate more revenue and attract higher-profile players because that is how established wealth and power works. To make any dent in the establishment, you have no choice but to try something different. Anyone who comes in with big ideas must be patient.
But this can be a trend and it can be a game-changer because it surely works for Premier League clubs too. If the rise of multi-club ownership (MCO) and inter-club relationships shows no sign of abating – Manchester City, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Brighton, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Manchester United, Newcastle United – why wouldn’t you want a club in a league a couple of hundred miles away where players and coaches are used to the English football experience?
Nobody wants to be a feeder club; everyone is adamant about that. Any discussion of MCOs comes with that caveat and minority investment is far more palpable than outright. But there is a real sense that this could be a feasible route for the Scottish Premiership to find its own new path.
What we’re really talking about here is change without a loss of identity. And as they walked back down the Gorgie Road to the centre of one of the world’s greatest pub cities, to toast their victory or drown the sorrows of defeat, singing songs to aid the anticipation of both, that didn’t seem in danger. There is change in the air. Something real is happening here.
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