Celtic won last season’s title, no amount of bleating from Hearts chairman is going to change that. Get over it

Yesterday, Hearts wheeled out their chairman to tell everybody how hard done by they were in last season’s title race.

Calum Paterson was the man chosen to do it, and the Daily Record was only too happy to give him the platform.

Once again, we are being dragged over the coals of what happened on the last day of the season, and in the run up to it.

None of which, by the way, can ever be changed.

Celtic won the title, and nothing a Hearts chairman says in October is going to alter that.

Here is what Paterson had to say, as reported by the Daily Record:

The circumstances at the end of that game were from our perspective completely unacceptable. We took advice and made our concerns very clear to the football authorities.

We certainly haven’t forgotten what happened last season.

Well, that makes two of us.

Because I haven’t forgotten either.

I remember Celtic winning 3-1 at Parkhead, in front of our own support, with the title on the line.

And I remember a fifth successive title being clinched.

That’s the bit that never seems to make it into these interviews.

Hearts were chasing their first league title in 66 years.

Sixty-six years, and it came down to the final day at Parkhead.

We took advice and made our concerns very clear, says the chairman.

Took advice from whom, exactly?

And what did they think that advice was going to achieve?

Paterson is also unhappy that the team leading the league at the split had to play its final game away from home.

Fine.

But the fixtures were known.

Everybody knew where they would be playing, and everybody knew what they had to do when they got there.

Hearts didn’t do it.

Apparently, that is Celtic’s problem to solve.

Make no mistake, it isn’t.

End of.

Hearts spent 40 years moaning about Albert Kidd, and they are about to start on the next 40.

If you want to know where this is heading, look at what came before.

In 1986, Hearts lost the title at Dens Park when Kidd scored twice for Dundee on the final day.

Celtic, for the record, won 5-0 at St Mirren that afternoon.

They have been telling that story ever since.

Forty years of it.

And one thing is clear now.

They will spend the next 40 moaning about the way they lost the title in 2026.

And you know what?

I believe that by then 80 years will have passed since 1986, and they still won’t have won a title.

That’s the thing about living in the past.

It’s a comfortable place to sit.

Nobody ever expects anything of you there.

A club serious about winning the League doesn’t dismantle its own squad.

Now, I’ll give Paterson one thing.

He does admit that Hearts could have communicated better with their own fans afterwards.

And he is right that there was a police investigation that limited what could be said.

That’s a fair point, and I’m happy to make it for him.

But then he says the club decided to “draw a line and look forward”.

Which is lovely.

Except that isn’t what the rest of the interview is.

You can’t draw a line under something while you are still dragging it into the room every time a microphone appears.

It’s one or the other.

Who exactly is that supposed to convince?

If Hearts were serious about challenging for the League title again this season, they would have built on what they achieved last season.

Instead, they allowed their squad to be dismantled.

They watched their manager head off to Ibrox.

And then two of the main players in their title challenge last season followed him.

Think about that for a second.

The manager and two key men, all away to the Ibrox side, and Hearts are the ones who want us to feel sorry for them.

A team that is serious about challenging for the League title doesn’t do that.

In fact, a team that is serious about challenging for a League title uses what happened last season to drive them on.

They get angry, and they use it.

They don’t sit in a room and ask for greater “transparency and consistency”.

It is a pointless exercise, and it will change absolutely nothing.

Hearts had their chance.

They were the team leading at the split, by Paterson’s own account, and they still couldn’t get over the line.

That is not Celtic’s fault.

It is not the referee’s fault.

And it is certainly not the fault of the football authorities who set a fixture list that was there for all to see.

It’s simply a side that came up short when it mattered.

Mind you, I can see why Paterson wants to keep the story alive.

As long as everyone is talking about the last day, nobody is talking about this season.

Nobody is asking why the squad that nearly won it all has been picked apart.

Nobody is asking where the manager went.

Hearts get to be victims, and the Record gets its clicks.

Everybody wins, except the truth.

And the Hearts support, who deserve better than a chairman keeping an old wound open.

Celtic won last season’s title.

It’s in the record books, and it isn’t coming out.

So no amount of bleating from the Hearts chairman is going to change that.

Get over it!

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