How many points will it take to win the Scottish Premiership this season? | OneFootball

It’s been over 40 years since a team other than Celtic or Rangers won the Scottish Premiership, but could Hearts make history this season?

With both of Scotland’s biggest clubs enduring inconsistent starts to the campaign, the door has been opened for a new challenger.

After finishing seventh last season, Hearts made wholesale changes over the summer, appointing Derek McInnes as their manager and signing 11 new players.

The campaign so far has been widely successful, with Hearts now sitting top of the table on 57 points with 12 games remaining.

But that begs the question, will McInnes’ side be able to maintain this form and how many points will it realistically take to win the league this year? We’ve crunched the numbers.

Based on their current points per game trajectory, Hearts are expected to pick up 83 points this season if they maintain their current PPG rate of 2.19.

If that’s the tally that it will take to win the league this season, it would be the lowest points threshold to win a title (38 games) since Celtic won it with 82 points in 2017-18.

At this same stage last season, Celtic led the table with 69 points, which is 12 more points than Hearts currently have.

By all of the indicators, this season will be an outlier and the threshold to win the title will be lower than in previous seasons.

However, that’s still no guarantee that the likes of Celtic and Rangers will be able to catch Hearts if they maintain their current form.

Rangers will play Hearts this weekend at Ibrox and Celtic still have a game in hand on the two sides above them.

In the case of Rangers, they’ve dramatically improved under Danny Rohl and had the German been in charge from the start of the season, there’s a good chance that they would be top right now.

Under Russell Martin, Rangers averaged a miserable 1.14 points per game, which is the equivalent of just 43 points over a full campaign.

In contrast, they’ve averaged 2.38 points per game under Rohl, which is the equivalent of 90 points over a full campaign.

If Rangers continue to average 2.38 points between now and the end of the season, they will finish the campaign with 80 points, which is three less than Hearts are projected to pick up based on their form.

Similarly, Celtic have looked considerably better under Martin O’Neill than they had under Wilfried Nancy and Brendan Rodgers before him.

During his two stints in charge this season, O’Neill has averaged an almost flawless 2.8 points per game. If Celtic manage to maintain that record, they’ll end the season with 87 points, which would surely be enough to clinch the league.

With that being said, we’re only judging O’Neill over a small sample size and it would be unrealistic to expect Celtic to maintain that record between now and the end of the campaign.

In all likelihood, it will take a points tally in the low to mid-80s to win the league this season, which means there’s still everything to play for.