Celtic’s chaos gave them a shot at glory. They blew it and Derek McInnes doesn’t have far to look for the culprit.
Let’s start with the bit that the media have been ignoring.
Hearts weren’t very good. In a normal season they would have been garnering praise for a creditable second or third place as a decent side. Competitive, strong in set pieces and exceptionally difficult to beat on their own ground. But they were a limited team who found themselves in a title race because Celtic spent part of the season in full-blown self-destruction mode.
For the sake of Scottish football, I hope that when the so called “Glasgow duopoly” is broken the team responsible is better than the current side that plays out of Tynecastle. Something along the lines of Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen in 1980 or Jim McLean’s Dundee United in 1983.
Hearts were nowhere close to that sort of quality. But they did have the advantage of a severely impaired opponent. The Celtic PLC Board seemed determined to tie its own shoelaces together and fall over its feet.
Their inexplicable appointment of Wilfried Nancy gave the rest of the league a shot at glory.
MCINNES FAILED DESPITE THE OPEN GOAL PROVIDED BY CELTIC APPOINTING WILFRIED NANCY
Hapless and hopeless the Frenchman lasted just 33 days at Celtic but in that time he acted like a one-man wrecking ball to the team’s ambitions. He threw away the League Cup Final with inexplicable tactics and a formation that the players couldn’t understand. And with four defeats in six SPFL matches it looked as if he had guaranteed that the title would be heading for Tynecastle or Ibrox.
Presented with this opportunity a top-class manager would know exactly what to do. Shut out the noise. Pay no attention to events at other clubs. Keep the players relentlessly focussed on their own results and performances. And, above all else, do not give them any excuse for failure.
If your team is not blessed with overwhelming quality, then the manager has to provide calm, control and clarity. He has to squeeze every ounce out of an ordinary group. He must stop emotion becoming a distraction.
WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH…
Yet when the chips were down the Hearts manager showed that he was incapable of managing his own emotions. If you can’t take care of yourself, how can you possibly manage a group of players who were in uncharted waters?
No one in that Hearts squad had come anywhere close to winning the SPFL. What they needed was a calm authoritative manager to guide them and keep them focussed.
Perhaps someone like Martin O’Neill? The interim Celtic manager – twice chucked into chaos at zero notice – was unfailingly polite, good humoured and responded to adversity by backing his players and focussing on the next game.
By contrast at times McInnes appeared to be a ball of uncontrolled fury and grievance. He showed his weakness with his bizarre outburst over the late Celtic penalty at Motherwell.
SPFL – 2nd
LC – 2nd Round
SC – 4th Round pic.twitter.com/6QQghhGglu— Celtic Curio (@Celticcurio) May 19, 2026
Confronted with the video of the incident a wise manager would have made it clear that his sole focus was on his own players and talked about the great opportunity to win the league in the next match. Instead, the Hearts coach showed pettiness and anger, used incendiary language to criticise the referee and complained that everyone was out to get him.
MCINNES OVERCOME BY DISTRACTIONS LED BY MEDIA CLOWN KRIS BOYD
This played wonderfully to the prevailing media narrative. But here’s the problem. Champions – and potential champions – do not spend the final week of a season whinging and sounding persecuted. They shut up, focus and get the result. Hearts did not. McInnes gave his players the perfect alibi for heroic failure. He opened the door and they marched through it.
I would counsel caution for any Hearts fan assuming that further opportunities are bound to follow. It’s true that the Celtic PLC Board have demonstrated remarkable incompetence this season. And it’s entirely possible that they will do so again. But they have also demonstrated a capacity to recover from disaster.
Hopeless Ronny Delia was followed by the ruthless and effective Brendan Rodgers. And when the second Neil Lennon tenure ended in fiasco, they made an outstanding appointment in Ange Postecoglou. The Australian gave the supporters some of their best days in recent years and this is the quality that Celtic should be seeking in their next Coach.
Its 40 years since Hearts last had a chance to win the league on the final day. If Celtic play their cards right, it could well be another four decades before the next opportunity comes along.
McInnes deserves some credit for keeping Hearts competitive. But if he is looking for the reason they failed, he should look in the mirror. An elite coach calms his players and guides them through the chaos. He does not add to it. And he certainly doesn’t make excuses for failure when there is still every possibility of success.
Hearts did not lose the title because everyone was against them. Celtic’s chaos gave them an unprecedented opportunity. McInnes made sure they wasted it.
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