The Scottish Premiership title race has narrowed to two, according to supporters of the clubs most directly involved, after Rangers suffered a defeat at Tynecastle that has left them adrift of Heart of Midlothian and Celtic.
BBC Scotland canvassed fans from all three clubs and found a shared view: that the contest for this season's championship will be settled between Hearts and Celtic, with Rangers no longer considered a realistic challenger by their own supporters as well as those of their rivals.
For Hearts, the significance of the result at Tynecastle extends beyond three points. A home victory over one of the Old Firm carries weight in itself, but when it reshapes the arithmetic of a title race — and when the clubs above and below you are watching closely — it acquires a different kind of meaning. The Edinburgh club have invested considerable ambition in recent seasons, and a sustained challenge for the Premiership would represent something genuinely new in the modern era of Scottish football.
Celtic, meanwhile, have long been the standard against which any challenger must measure themselves. The Parkhead club have dominated the division for much of the past decade and a half, and any side seeking to interrupt that record must sustain their form across the full length of a Scottish Premiership campaign — a demand that has undone more than one promising challenge in previous years.
Rangers' position is not yet mathematically closed, and the season retains enough fixtures to complicate any assumption. But the mood among supporters, as BBC Scotland reports it, is telling. When a club's own fans conclude that the title is no longer theirs to win, the psychological dimension of a title race often follows the arithmetic before long.
How Hearts and Celtic divide opinion among neutrals will depend largely on what each side does in the coming weeks. A two-club race sharpens every dropped point and magnifies every direct encounter between the sides. Whether Tynecastle proves a turning point or merely a moment in a longer story remains to be seen.