Maybe the time is nigh to reimagine what is possible and what is impossible in Scottish football. After this resounding Hearts win in what was deemed the biggest test of their mettle this season, talk of an era ending and a new one beginning may not be as outlandish as so many of us have been programmed into believing. For 40 years the Old Firm hegemony has held. Everybody has become a fatalist. If it wasn't Celtic, it was Rangers. Many - perhaps every - supporter in the land has long since resigned themselves to never seeing a team from outside the big Glasgow two winning the top league. It was just accepted, like night following day. Occasionally a pretender has exploded out of the blocks in early season, winning games, throwing shapes, threatening to upset the way of things, but they've always been cut down by the Glasgow goliaths. And now?

Painfully early in the season, it's true. Only nine games played and 29 left to play, as Brendan Rodgers pointed out later, in a somewhat revealing comment about the way he sees the lay of the land. There's still time to catch up was his gist. This is new territory for the Celtic manager. The evidence of our own eyes right now is that Hearts are clearly the best team in the country. That's all we can go on. They've beaten Celtic and Rangers and have beaten them well. They're out-playing, out-scoring and out-defending everybody. They won this game not just because of the effervescence of their attack and the holy trinity of Alexandrios Kyziridis, Lawrence Shankland and Claudio Braga - goalscorers and goal creators yet again - but also in their togetherness and work-rate and absolute desire and self-belief.

On a day of noise and colour, Hearts fans goaded their counterparts with their own version of the Celtic Poznan - all linking together, backs to the pitch, bouncing up and down - when Shankland made it 3-1. They did that and more. Cheering every Hearts touch for a spell, belting out 'We shall not be moved' in other moments. Their every utterance was akin to a 'is this all you've got?' message to their visitors. And, yes, that was all Celtic had. Hearts have now scored three goals in three of their last four games and in five of the nine they've played in the Premiership. Against Celtic, they beat their seasonal average shots on target (seven as against a previous average of 5.7). Celtic's Kasper Schmeichel made more saves than in any other league game this season. It wasn't a rout, but it was emphatic. It was an answer to those wondering about Hearts' capacity to live up to the pressure of their biggest game of the season. They did that - and then some.

Derek McInnes is building something weighty here. He knows it but he's got far too much savvy to crow about it. He's measured and meticulous and mightily impressive right now. Hearts are great to watch - and from McInnes you get a sense that there's a lot more to come. More new players arriving, others just coming back into the team after injury. Not bit-parters, but big-timers, or so he hopes. There were many moments that stuck in the mind's eye. The relentless nature of the way Hearts began the game, going at Celtic's jugular in a way that only teams with true belief really can. They got their reward with a goal, Dane Murray panicking and hoofing the ball into his own net instead of making a clearance that should have been routine. Celtic put it up to them in the 15 minutes that followed. They scored and should have scored again, but didn't. They'd regret it.

You can't fake confidence. You either have it or you don't. The way Hearts roared back and won was the greatest illustration of their merits we've seen so far. And a signal of Celtic's weakness. Showing Kyziridis the inside and inviting him to have a crack is a fool's errand, but that's what they did and that's how they fell behind again. Making jumpy decisions when under the cosh is not the way to survive a trial at Tynecastle, but that's what Murray did when bringing down Braga for Shankland's penalty. In the preamble, Rodgers said that he was including Murray along with Colby Donovan and Jonny Kenny because sometimes youth has no fear. It did here. Murray was exposed and Kenny was a bystander. If you were to forget that Hearts - or any other non-Old Firm club - are not supposed to win the league, you can only conclude that McInnes's side are the real deal and that Rodgers's huff and puff champions are in real trouble.

They haven't looked this good since George Burley was in charge two decades ago, that particular Hearts challenge getting snuffed out not by the Old Firm but by the folly of the club's owner at the time, Vlad Romanov. Some might say it's unwise for Hearts folk to dream because it's too early in the campaign. But why not? Isn't football about dreaming of what might be? They've known plenty of misery in these parts in recent times. Telling a Jambo to calm down as their team strides into an eight-point lead at the top of the table is to be the worst kind of killjoy. They have not won the league since 1960. Long road ahead. Danger ahoy, no doubt. Pressure and injury and bumps on the way, but these are exhilarating times. And what might, just might, make it sustainable - is that the infrastructure of the club is everything that Celtic's and Rangers' is not. It's solid. It's focused. It's underpinned by the money and wisdom of Tony Bloom, the Brighton chairman, who has invested £10m for a minority stake in the club. It's underpinned, also, by the work of Jamestown Analytics and their ability to find the likes of Kyziridis, an uncapped Greek who was playing in Slovakia, and Braga, who was operating in the second tier of Norwegian football. The club is now aligned on and off the pitch after many years of being a troubled place. Celtic and Rangers wouldn't mind such stability. People entrenched in Scottish football see things as they have always been and can never see them changing. Perhaps that view will still hold true at the end of the season. Perhaps. The fact there is a considerable doubt is exciting enough for now. People like Bloom, watching here from the stand, are a breath of fresh air. He's already said that Hearts can win the league in a decade. That kind of chat from an underdog is usually laughed off in Scotland. Usually. Tynecastle was alive on Sunday. Another test passed with flying colours. Glorious maroon, of course.