John Hartson has questioned the strength of the Scottish Premiership after Celtic’s convincing 3-0 Scottish Cup win over Hearts.
Robbie Neilson’s team had been tipped to make life difficult for the champions at Tynecastle, but Aaron Mooy’s strike after just two minutes set them on their way to a relatively easy victory as Kyogo and Cameron Carter-Vickers added two more to join Inverness CT in the last four and secure a return to Hampden.
There’s a gulf between Celtic and everybody else in the league, but Hartson has questioned the quality of teams outside the top three given the Hoops were streets ahead of the third best in the country. He acknowledged that the Jambos were missing too many key players to have a realistic chance of causing a cup upset, but still sees them as best of the rest and doubts any of those below them will be able to reel them in. The Old Firm have now scored 14 goals between them at Tynecastle this season.
Speaking while on duty as a pundit at Tynecastle for Viaplay, Hartson said: “Yes, Hearts have a lot of injuries - missing their top scorer Lawrence Shankland and Robert Snodgrass who can make things happen, long term injuries like Craig Halkett who is their leader - but saying all that they are still doing fantastically well.
“They are third in the league and maybe we need to look at the league. Is the league strong enough? Hearts are up to third and for me are the third best team in Scotland but who else is really threatening Hearts right now? They are five points ahead of Hibs and way clear of other teams. Celtic, Rangers and Hearts are the top three teams and the other teams have to do a lot more to catch up.
“Celtic march on. They are steamrolling everyone right now, they really are. They are 21 games unbeaten. They’re awesome. The one thing Hearts had to do - and I said it at the start of the game - was stay with Celtic.
“You can’t gift Celtic anything. In the first minute Celtic got in behind and Reo Hatate had a really good shoot. Zander Clark made the save, a minute later Celtic go a goal in front and all of a sudden Hearts have an awful lot do do. Hearts came back into the game with the Toby Sibbick chance but I can’t recall Joe Hart making another save in 90 minutes."
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