Celtic dropped to third place in the league as Hearts beat them 2-0 at Tynecastle on Sunday. Rangers had scraped a 1-0 victory over Hibs on Saturday which took them 10 points clear. It may not have been the most convincing victory of all time but come the end of the season all that matters are the points on the board and Rangers have won three titles in a row by stacking up the 1-0 victories while Celtic have lost or drawn games they really should have won.

It has been a very poor start to the season for the Bhoys and even if they win their game in hand a seven-point deficit in the Scottish Premier League is a hard thing to pull back, even in October. The season is obviously not over though, with three old firms left to play and the inevitability of Rangers slipping up against someone eventually, it is impossible to write off Celtic completely. Neil Lennon; however, will have some tough decisions to make. Following defeat to Hearts he pondered over possible solutions to their poor consistency, “Do I change the system? Do I change the personnel? We’re not finding consistency. We lost four games the whole of last season, we have lost three this season already.” One thing is for sure though, if the Glasgow teams form does not pick up over the next month or so, it may be the Celtic Board considering a change in personnel and he may be the one to suffer the consequences. During midweek, Celtic played their second Europa League Group Stage game, at home to Italian side Udinese, they took the lead early on thanks to a penalty from Ki Sung-Yeung but they were thwarted as another penalty was handed to the Italians in the 88^th minute which allowed them to equalise.

Elsewhere in the league, Motherwell continued their fantastic run this season with a 3-1 win over Dundee Utd, which took them to second, a point ahead of Celtic having played a game more. I would love at this stage to say that there is every possibility that they will maintain this high standard through the season and push for a top two finish, separating or even beating the two Glasgow teams. However, in reality, it will be a shock to all those involved if, come January or February there isn’t a 10+ point gap between the second placed Old Firm team and Motherwell or whichever other team happens to be in third. Nevertheless, they have shown valiant effort over the first ten games of the season and should at least go some way to closing the gap between second and third.

In the other matches over the weekend, Inverness CT picked up three valuable points with a 2-1 win over St Mirren and high-flying St Johnstone beat Kilmarnock 2-1. There will be no SPL action this weekend as Europe takes an International Break, Scotland will play Liechtenstein on Saturday in what is a must-win game should they retain any hope of qualifying for Euro ’12.