Extinguish all smiles and get ready for take off

And anyway they're not even a top six club any more.

The game belongs to Glasgow, with an honorable mention to Steve Clarke's Kilmarnock for a remarkable show of consistency in a supporting role.

You know the tension is rising in terms of the championship because civility has disappeared in the opposite direction at a considerable rate of knots.

Celtic have won a remarkable seven trophies in a row under Brendan Rodgers but Rangers have risen to the top of the league table.

On the same day.

The excitement is now unbearable for those who have not experienced this level of competition for the last eight years and are exhibiting signs of finding it difficult to cope.

Rangers have been away on a self-inflicted period of detachment from the top level of the game.

Celtic have totally dominated the domestic front at the same time while accumulating a seriously healthy bank balance off the back of European competition.

The idea that the balance of power could undergo a change of direction excites one group of fans and unhinges another lot.

Superscoreboard is an accurate barometer of public opinion on an issue such as this.

On Sunday night, the Celtic support could not properly celebrate their team's Betfred Cup final win over Aberdeen at Hampden for fretting over what they perceived to be the overly extravagant nature of Rangers' celebrations following their league win over Hearts at Tynecastle.

The Rangers fans, meanwhile, complained that the celebrations in the wake of Celtic's cup win had been disproportionate to the quality of their performance on the park.

Here is the news.

Hearts were hopeless against Rangers. They needed one of Steven Gerrard's players to score their goal and no Hearts player has found the net in the last six matches.

Craig Levein says Hearts were playing twelve men because the referee, Bobby Madden, did not do his job properly and favoured one side over the other.

Using that rule of thumb, Hearts used no players against Rangers because they were inefficient from start to finish and managed to create the impression that that a red card for Rangers actually left the Edinburgh side at a numerical disadvantage, not the other way round.

If Hearts' manager had any issues he could have had his side do something radical in return, like have a shot at goal.

Aberdeen's manager, Derek McInnes, came out with the post-match puzzler that there wasn't much between the sides.

But Celtic were visibly off form and Aberdeen failed to put them under any form of threat whatsoever.

They should refund the travelling expenses of the Aberdeen support. How many times do these thousands of people from the North-East have to travel to Glasgow and find themselves subjected to a level of performance which makes a mockery of their efforts to be there?

It is annual breach of promise.

Hearts and Aberdeen, two of the country's major football institutions, amount to nothing in terms of the league title and that trophy will not go outwith Glasgow city boundaries for the foreseeable future, if ever again.

All of which means Wednesday night will see the start of a nostalgic return to olden days.

Celtic will go to Motherwell and Rangers will play Aberdeen at Ibrox and the margin for error has vanished where the Old Firm are concerned.

Aberdeen are the model of mid-table mundanity and Rangers would need to be awful to slip up, while Motherwell are hampered by the loss of key players to injury.

Celtic would need to be as sluggish as they were at Hampden to suffer a loss of any points.

But it's the uncertainty that means we now have a two horse race worthy of the name. Celtic fans are offended by the concept of competition, even though their team currently sits in second place in the league table.

But the outcome of the league title race is up for debate.

The Rangers supporters are too intoxicated by the thought of emerging from the wilderness years to be thinking too clearly about the immediate future.

Somewhere in the middle are those who can sit back and calmly say this is a drama unfolding which is ultimately good for the game.

Steven Gerrard celebrated as if he had enjoyed the day of his life at Tynecastle because he knows that his club's fans have craved a tangible sign of Rangers being a successful club once again.

And it did make a mockery of Rangers protesting about the lavish nature of Celtic's celebrations when they beat their fiercest rivals at the beginning of the season.

But hypocrisy is a noble part of the game, and always has been.

Now fasten your seat belt, extinguish all smiles and prepare for take-off. The remainder of the season just got very interesting indeed.

Get used to it

• Hugh Keevins