People will remember that after the split kicked off last season, the Ibrox club promptly lost its first game and started to spiral that James that the transfer of loyalties and hopes over to Hearts was about as fake as anything we had ever seen in Scottish football.

The media were suddenly cheerleading Hearts as if they had all been born with a maroon badge tattooed on their souls.

And this site warned Hearts about it. It warned their supporters about it too, because these people were not even fair-weather friends. Fair-weather friends at least have some affection for you when things are going well.

This was something else entirely. It was a marriage of convenience. They did not particularly care about Hearts. What they cared about was Celtic not winning the league. Hearts were useful because they represented the last realistic opportunity to stop that happening.

Imagine our shock that it has gone exactly the way we said it would.

The adulation has largely disappeared.

Hearts are no longer being feted, revered and talked about as though they are the great coming force in Scottish football. Instead, much of the West of Scotland football ecosystem has gone straight back to treating them as a joke.

This should not surprise anybody who understands how things operate around here, and it certainly should not surprise Hearts supporters. There have been threads on Ibrox fan media which reveal the complete absence of sympathy for Hearts after the weekend.

Had they lost seven goals to almost anyone else at the weekend, the gloating would have been absolutely off the charts.

There is still plenty of gloating, of course. It is simply tempered by the identity of the team which inflicted the damage.

But it is the nature of some of that reaction which should tell Hearts exactly where they stand.

Because the anger from some Ibrox supporters is not simply that Hearts failed to win the title last season, depriving those fans of the on-field win. They are angry that Hearts failed to deliver the result they wanted off the field as well.

They cheered Hearts on because Hearts were useful to them.

They wanted Hearts to win because it meant Celtic would lose.

Once Hearts failed in that role, the sympathy evaporated.

And some of the resentment has continued because of the bizarre belief that Hearts should then have done something after the season ended about the supposed injustices which allegedly cost them the title.

Exactly what they were supposed to do has never been properly explained. Exactly what grounds they were supposed to pursue have never been properly identified. Exactly what process was supposedly available to reverse the outcome of a completed league campaign remains a mystery.

Yet some people are still angry that Hearts did not pursue it.

That is revealing, because it tells Hearts supporters something they really ought to understand. These people were never standing alongside them. They were standing behind them, hoping Hearts would do the job they themselves could not.

The moment Hearts failed to do it, they stopped being useful. And once you stop being useful in Scottish football’s tribal ecosystem, you very quickly discover how shallow some of those temporary alliances really are.

Hearts supporters should remember that the next time they see some newspaper columnist, radio presenter or Ibrox fan outlet suddenly talking down their club. Ask why. Ask what has changed. Ask what they wanted from you this time last year; it was not “the title race the country craved.” Hearts weren’t even useful idiots.

Last season should have taught them something important. The affection was conditional. The praise was conditional. The respect was conditional.

Hearts were not being embraced because people suddenly discovered a deep admiration for Tynecastle, the club’s history, its support or its ambitions. They were embraced because Celtic were vulnerable and somebody, anybody, had to stop us.

That was the deal.

And once Hearts could no longer deliver on it, the deal was over.

Now, after a 7-1 defeat at Celtic Park, some of the very same ecosystem which spent months talking Hearts up as legitimate champions-in-waiting is happily laughing at them again.

Hearts should continue trying to build something serious.

They should continue trying to improve the club, modernise it and become stronger. But they should do it for themselves. Not for newspaper columnists, not for broadcasters and not for Ibrox supporters desperate for somebody else to solve their Celtic problem.

Because those people were never Hearts supporters.

They were simply borrowing the scarf for a few months.

And now they have not so much handed it back but thrown it back in Hearts faces.

It is contemptible behaviour … but nothing we didn’t predict.

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