Moneyball — Scottish Premier league style

The numbers don’t lie.

As the Scottish Premiership gets set for its annual split, when the 12-team league divides in two for the final five games of the season, first-place Heart of Midlothian is targeting a most unlikely title and its first since 1960, when Tommy Walker’s side topped the table twice in three years.

With 70 points from 33 matches, Hearts has a one-point lead on Rangers and a three-point advantage over Celtic — the Old Firm that has finished champions every spring since 1985. Nothing and no one suggested that would change this term, especially after Hearts came an unremarkable seventh just 11 months ago.

That is, nothing but a mysterious supercomputer and no one except Tony Bloom, the gambler-slash-entrepreneur-slash-data geek who bought a minority stake in the club last summer. He intuited that Hearts would challenge for the title immediately and would win it, and break up the Old Firm, within a decade.

The famous forecaster might have outdone even himself with that prediction.

Arriving in west Edinburgh with his most-welcome millions, Bloom also came equipped with his secretive metrics company Jamestown Analytics. So reliable has been Jamestown’s performance that his bold statement might have been less a prediction than straightforward statistical analysis.

Not that the Tynecastle faithful, delirious at the prospect of the trophy, much care about their club’s moneyball approach to team-building. It’s working, and that’s enough.

That said, Hearts is a fascinating subject for one of the world’s leading data vendors.

With shares primarily owned by a fans’ foundation — Bloom’s is a non-voting stake — the Jambos are the largest supporters-owned club in the UK. It’s Packers-meets-Athletics, Scottish football version. Ultimately, the only number that matters is the one in the points column.

But the underlying figures are fascinating.

In its most recent outing against Motherwell, Hearts’ 20-man squad was composed of 10 players acquired this season — as advised by Jamestown Analytics. Eight of them played.

In the game before that, six freshmen were included in the starting 11. And in the game before that, seven played from the opening whistle.

Starting goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow, with 14 clean sheets from 26 appearances, was signed on a free transfer from Union Berlin. Winger Alexandros Kyziridis, acquired on a freebie from Slovakia’s Zemplin Michalovce, has contributed four goals and six assists.

The revelatory Cláudio Braga, presently third in Premiership scoring with 14 goals, arrived from Aalesunds FK of Norway for half-a-million pounds. Reliable defender Stuart Findlay is on loan from Oxford United. Key full-back Oisin McEntee joined free from Walsall but is unfortunately out for the season with a thigh injury.

Then there is manager Derek McInnes, the former Aberdeen and Kilmarnock coach hired in May — again on Jamestown’s advice. He won Manager of the Month for each of August, September and October.

Not to dwell on it further, but Jamestown’s methods are notably clandestine. Which is part of its appeal, as all we have by way of judging its success is the results enjoyed by the clubs employing it.

Aside from Hearts’ unexpected title bid, Serie A side Como — a third-tier enterprise just four years ago — is currently fifth in the Italian top flight, ahead of Roma and Lazio. In Belgium, Union Saint-Gilloise was recently in the second division but won the Jupiler Pro League last season, its first title in 90 years.

Something Jamestown can’t do, however, is influence the performance of rival teams, especially those with superior resources like Rangers and Celtic.

Hearts might be in top spot as it prepares for Sunday’s Edinburgh Derby with Hibs at Easter Road (10:30 a.m., Tenor Sports), but Rangers is the team with the most momentum.

Since manager Danny Röhl’s appointment in late October, the Ibrox outfit has lost only once — to Hearts, incidentally — and comes into the weekend unbeaten in 2026. No Premiership team has scored as many goals or posted as high a goal-difference. It hosts fourth-place Motherwell in Sunday’s early kickoff (9:00 a.m., Tenor Sports).

Celtic, meanwhile, will welcome Falkirk to Parkhead on Saturday (11:30 a.m., Tenor Sports) and can go level with Hearts if it prevails. The reigning champions, Hoops have finished atop the standings in 13 of the last 14 seasons and, despite a difficult campaign, can rely on a muscle memory of winning through the final five rounds.

In this context, Hearts cannot be fancied to break the Old Firm and win a first title in 66 years. That it’s done this well for this long is already remarkable.

And yet, there’s a chance. The data says so, and the analytics have already defied the history over the balance of the schedule.

The only thing Hearts can do is everything it’s been doing to date, trusting the numbers to add up in its favour when all’s said and done.

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