With ex-Unioner Schwolow in the box
©IMAGO
After last Sunday’s win against Celtic Glasgow, Heart of Midlothian FC now sit eight points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership. With only two missed points from nine games played, the Jam Tarts made their best start to the season since 2005/06 – and could secure the championship title for the first time since 1960. Transfermarkt takes a look behind the scenes at Hearts, where Alexander Schwolow, a former Bundesliga keeper, is one of the guarantors of success.
The 33-year-old Schwolow moved to the Scots from Union Berlin on a free transfer in the summer and has been convincing ever since. In five games he kept four clean sheets and only conceded one goal against Celtic. His team’s performance on Sunday was more than ready for a title – although coach Derek McInnes subsequently tried to play down talk of a possible championship. “We’re doing well at the moment, but it’s only three points. It’s important for us to keep winning and I’m glad we’ve managed to do that. We still have a lot to do, a lot in fact.”
Despite McInnes’ modesty, there’s no getting around the euphoria surrounding Tynecastle Park at the moment. After an investment of 11.3 million euros by Brighton owner Tony Bloom in the summer, the club from Edinburgh is on the rise and even seems to have overtaken the two traditional Glasgow clubs Celtic and Rangers. The last Scottish champions that did not come from Glasgow were Aberdeen FC in 1985.
Does Heart of Midlothian benefit? The sudden decline of Celtic
To understand why the signs are not pointing towards the title at Celtic at the moment, it helps to take a look at the starting eleven from last Sunday. Although Brendan Rodgers’ team, who has since resigned, was missing important regular players such as Cameron Carter-Vickers, Alistair Johnston, Jota and Daizen Maeda due to injuries, the club, which was hit by the summer transfer window, also sent a team onto the field that seems to have lost quality. During the aforementioned transfer period, Celtic sold, among others, German professional Nicolas Kühn to Como for 19 million euros and Adam Idah to Swansea for 6.9 million euros. Last season, Matt O’Riley was sold to Brighton for €29.5 million and Kyogo Furuhashi was sold to Stade Rennes for €12 million. Since Rodgers returned to the club in the summer of 2023, Celtic have made €133m from player sales and have spent just €88m on new players. This is slowly becoming noticeable.
In addition to the poor start to the league season, Celtic also stumbled in Champions League qualification. Rodgers’ team was unable to reconcile the high turnover in the squad with the demands of a strong opponent in European competition. Celtic were eliminated by Kairat Almaty and have only won one of their first three Europa League games so far. When Rodgers, who resigned on Monday, reflected on the poor start to the season in a press conference last month, he admitted the club had handled the situation poorly. After his resignation, these statements included a verbal attack on Rodgers from club owner Dermot Desmond.
“I think the club’s business model is really successful. What we have to combine with it is football,” said the then Celtic boss. “Not just investment, but the timing of the investment. It was clear what we needed and we needed it early. We had those qualifiers. The summer of 2025 was a crucial time for us to sign players who were ready for those games and we weren’t ready.”
Heart of Midlothian: The Bloom Revolution
When Bloom invested in Hearts earlier this year, he said he wanted to “break the pattern of dominance that has existed in Scotland for far too long.” The fact that the latter was achieved so quickly was undoubtedly due to the decline of Celtic and the difficulties of Rangers – the Ibrox club has just appointed its fifth coach in the last four years, the German Danny Röhl. While the Scottish record champions struggled on and off the pitch, Hearts thrived and took advantage of the huge power vacuum at the top of the Scottish Premiership.
While top Scottish clubs usually rely on transfers from other Scottish teams or loans from England, nine of Hearts’ ten summer transfers came from outside the UK – Cláudio Braga and Christian Borchgrevink from Norway, Alexandros Kyziridis from Serbia and record signing Ageu from Portuguese club Santa Clara, also a keeper Schwolow from Berlin (Overview: All summer transfers from Heart of Midlothian FC).
The Scottish league leaders’ summer transfers already had all the hallmarks of Jamestown Analytics, the well-known data analysis service from Investor Bloom, which has already helped the 55-year-old’s other clubs in England and Belgium to be successful. And the new signings took off.
After 14 games, Braga has a strong record of eight goals and four assists, while left winger Kyziridis also set his mark with five goals and five assists in twelve games. In total, the new additions to McInnes’ team have contributed eleven goals in the first nine league games.
A lot has changed in Edinburgh in the last six months. Last season they narrowly avoided relegation; after repeated calls of “Sack the board,” the 77-year-old president Ann Budge, who has led the club in various functions since 2014, announced her resignation at this year’s general meeting in December. Whether the latter is solely due to the turbulence of last season or also due to Bloom’s growing influence at the club remains to be seen.
But there is little doubt that Hearts will end 2025 in far better shape than they started. Scottish football has not had a championship celebration outside Celtic Park or Ibrox Stadium for 40 years. Should one take place at the Tynecastle in Edinburgh in May, it would undoubtedly result in one of the most remarkable stories of the season in European football.