Well, we all said it on Thursday night.

We all said it after watching that second-half performance against Benfica where, although Benfica took their foot off the gas a little, something happened to Celtic’s attacking play.

And it happened because we brought on two substitutes.

One was Callum Osmand. The other was Haissem Hassan. They transformed the way we played. They brought energy and pace and movement.

Both started today, exactly as I hoped they would, and from the first minute they terrorised Hearts. Five-one at half-time.

A scoreline so astonishing that Crocker and the rest of them were desperately scrambling around for explanations as to why it had become so comprehensive.

But it was comprehensive for one reason above all others. This Celtic team played according to its capabilities, in a system which worked.

And Hearts did not stand a chance.

Our game slowed down when Jota came on. It slowed again when Forrest came on. But even then, the movement off the ball was still there. The energy was still there. The intent was still there. Had we got the full 90 minutes out of Haissem Hassan and Callum Osmand today, that scoreline could have been anything we wanted it to be.

The damage was done in the first half, obviously, but the way we started the second showed there was still plenty left in us.

And honestly, that is the best I have seen Celtic play in a long, long time.

Even the Village Idiot had to find something positive to say about the performance, and he actually paid us a rather enormous compliment by saying it reminded him of watching peak Ange, and that is exactly what it looked like from those attacking wide players.

Fast, direct and relentless.

A lot of the media will talk about a Hearts performance that was disjointed, messy and defensively unsound. But that explanation only takes you so far.

We attacked them. We pressed them. We forced mistake after mistake out of their players. For long spells, we were virtually camped in their half.

The high press, the movement and the energy put them under constant pressure. That is why the game became so easy for us.

Hearts could have played a lot better today and still lost comprehensively.

And this is the first time this season I have watched Celtic and been absolutely convinced that no club in this country would have laid a glove on that first-half Celtic team.

Not even close. Even Benjamin Nygren had a much better game in terms of his overall work than I have seen from him in a long time.

You found him tracking back. You found him doing more to help the players around him. There was far more of a complete midfield performance there than we have been seeing recently. And of course he also scored two goals.

That part of his game has never really been in doubt. Get him in or around the penalty area and he is reliable. He has that instinct.

I thought Mika Baur had another fantastic game as well. It is no wonder he is now a German international because he is a terrific footballer.

Put him into a Celtic midfield with a little more steel around him, where he has the freedom to dictate the game rather than worrying about plugging every gap, and you have a class act.

The energy and intensity dropped a little when we took off the two wide players, but even then Jota was pure entertainment on the left. He does not have Callum Osmand’s pace, but he still gave Hearts problems and still carried a threat.

Kasper Høgh came on for Camilo Durán at a point when the game had slowed considerably and we were no longer putting balls into the box with the same regularity.

Even then, he managed to get the assist for the seventh, and that highlighted an underrated part of his game. He has excellent football intelligence.

He sees what is happening around him, he is always looking for the player in the better position, and he is perfectly willing to make the unselfish pass if somebody else has the clearer chance.

There was nothing not to like about Celtic today. Nothing.

The media will say Hearts made it easy for us, but that is nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Hearts created chances of their own. The commentary team on Sky went out of its way at times to suggest that the game was somehow closer than the scoreline made it look.

It was not. It was not even remotely close.

That was a devastating victory for Celtic.

Everything we have been crying out for, everything we have been talking about on this blog and on the podcast over and over again, was there.

High aggressive pressing. Movement off the ball. Players who can run. Players who can pull defenders out of position. Players creating space for each other. Players attacking with intent instead of standing around waiting for something to happen.

It was all there. Everything we have been looking for.

And the scoreline was incredible. It was a phenomenal result and a phenomenal performance. If people in the media and elsewhere want to convince themselves that they did not just watch Celtic play at something close to our peak, that is up to them.

Because for me, that was one of the best Celtic performances we have seen in at least two or three years. And that is the team now.

As long as those two wide men are fit, as long as we play with that level of intensity, that much energy and that much movement off the ball, that is the side which gets us through this season. Play like that consistently and we do not just stay ahead.

We start opening the gap. We wanted answers today.

We wanted to see whether whatever had been talked about behind the scenes, whatever had been worked on during the three-week international break, was actually beginning to take shape.

Today was as emphatic an answer as you are ever likely to get.

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