Back to square one

Over the past couple of weeks, the clubs at Ibrox and Tynecastle have been making postive noises about turning their miserable seasons around. Rangers have turned a corner! Hearts are sorting out their differences!

Aye, right.

Rangers' latest defeat, against Falkirk, is all the more demoralising because it ended a mini-revival in the club's fortunes (3 wins in a row) that suggested Paul Le Guen was getting the hang of this tricky thing called Scottish football. But his team still has problems all over the park: their defence is shaky, their midfield is often out-classed, and things are going from bad to worse up front. Kris Boyd picked up an injury at the weekend and is apparently out until the New Year, Filip Sebo (Le Guen's biggest signing to date) has done little to suggest he has what it takes, and no one expects Dado Prso to recover the agility he had a couple of years ago.

Well played Falkirk, though, with another inspirational performance from Russell Latapy. Used to play for Rangers, you know.

Last week, Vladimir Romanov had supposedly made peace with the Hearts supporters, after praising Steven Pressley. Now, the captain has seemingly been suspended from the club. They managed a 2-2 draw with St Mirren but that was just a brief interlude as the club resumed trying to tear itself apart. There are still appeasers in the ranks of Hearts fans, though, determined not to upset their volatile chairman at any cost. It could cost them dearly.

Celtic can probably be classed as Champions-Elect now. They are not playing as well as they were in September, but they are still picking up points and that means the title is all but theirs. A draw would have been a fair result against Aberdeen, but they won and are now 16 points clear.

Hibs didn't play as well as they can on Saturday either, but ground out a win against Craig Levein's resurgent, combative Dundee Utd. But the result was overshadowed by Scott Brown's transfer request. John Collins was emphatic in his response - "I read it, ripped it up and threw it in the bin" - but it will take all the rookie manager's nous not to let this row destabilise their recent good form.

Dunfermline's new manager, Stephen Kenny, returned to Northern Ireland to lead his old club Derry to victory in the FAI Cup. Let's hope it helped him forget about the 5-1 mauling from Kilmarnock, eh?

And ICT lost 1-0 to Motherwell at home. ICT have forgotten how to score goals and are drifting down the league. Dunfermline remain 5 points adrift at the bottom, but there are a number of clubs who could get sucked into trouble down there.