Hearts Haunted at Hampden

Semi-final clashes in the Premier Sports Cup and the domestic difficulties of Scottish clubs playing in Europe.

A frightful clash between Edinburgh rivals Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian was played on Sunday 1 November. The victors will face Rangers, 1-0 winners over Aberdeen the prior day, in the Premier Sports Cup final on 13 December.

It was a fast start for the Jambos, with the scoring opened by Claudio Braga after a mere four minutes of play. With only two fit defensive midfielders in the Hearts squad, and enforcer Tomas Magnusson hooked after a head knock, Hibs were able to overrun the middle of the park for most of the game.

A trademark breakaway goal from Hibs’ hero Martin Boyle and playmaker Jamie McGrath’s scrappy rebound saw the Hibees ahead at the interval. A stale second half saw the team from Leith hold off Hearts for a 2-1 win. It was the first time Hibs have defeated their rivals at Hampden Park, and new manager Marink Reedijk’s first win in charge of the side.

Injury problems in midfield left Hearts boss Wouter Vrancken with several head-scratching decisions ahead of their European Conference League game against Swiss champions FC Thun. After the semi-final loss, Vrancken told the Daily Record, “I don’t know how I [will] make changes [for Thursday]. Players will have to play out of position, so we’ll see who has the quality to play in certain [positions].” Hearts’ woes continued on Thursday with a 3-1 defeat.

The other cup semi-final saw a Rangers team running hot come up against an out-of-form Aberdeen. The commonplace fixture in the cup’s latter stages proved to be a slight disappointment, with a late winner from Rangers marksman Ryan Don Naderi sending the Bears through to the final. 

Hibs ended a 114-year wait for a Scottish Cup final win in 2016, beating Rangers, with then-captain and recently-relieved manager David Gray scoring the winner in stoppage time. Can they achieve a similar feat against familiar opposition next month and claim their first Premier Sports Cup since 2007?

Celtic, meanwhile, were knocked out of the competition in September after a lacklustre 3-0 defeat by Rangers in the quarter-final at Ibrox. Manager Martin O’Neill faces serious pressure from fans as the side have taken their foot off the gas in recent weeks. Falkirk boss John McGlynn must have dressed up as the Scottish Pep Guardiola for Halloween, as his team took three points off the Hoops in a 2-0 win on Sunday 1 November. 

Speaking to the BBC after the match, O’Neill said, “we have an abundance of games. We’re playing European football. It’s hard for the same players to play every single week.” 

It’s a problem shared by Celtic and Hearts, the only two clubs carrying Scottish pride in UEFA competitions this year, after Rangers, Hibs, and Motherwell all crashed out of Conference League qualifying in the final round. How can clubs maintain a ‘strongest XI’ whilst competing in lucrative yet fitness-damming European fixtures?

With the top two league finishers struggling for domestic form, other clubs may look to capitalise on their league positions. Rangers, with the largest budget of the rest, and having failed to win a trophy since the 2023-24 campaign, face high expectations from supporters and pundits alike. 

“Fans go into the season stating, ‘treble.’ That’s the bar,” former Rangers right-back and Scotland international Alan Hutton told The Scotsman. “I think this [League Cup run] is probably a real sense now that they can go and do something like that.”

Although the Premier Sports Cup doesn’t have the same prestige as the Scottish Cup (Scotland’s equivalent of the FA Cup), it’s a trophy nonetheless that both Hibs and Rangers would relish lifting at Hampden on 13 December. 

Photo Credit: Gregor Murray