Celtic's travel sickness worsens

Celtic lost the chance to move to within two points of Rangers, the Premier League leaders, after a display against Hearts in which they returned to their old, ineffective ways.

Phil O'Donnell did score with 17 minutes remaining, but it was too little, too late after goals by Stephane Adam gave Hearts two wins in a row for the first time this season.

The defeat completed a weekend which began with the sudden walk-out of a player bought for £3 million but absent without so much as kicking a ball for his new employers.

Celtic could not blame the loss of Marko Viduka for their problems in Edinburgh. What you have never had cannot be missed, and Celtic used the outfield players who had won the two previous games.

They had the majority of the early play at Tynecastle as well, until Hearts took the lead nine minutes before the interval with a goal from Adam, created by his French compatriot, Vincent Guerin.

Hearts might earlier have suspected that fate was going to deny them, after Jonathan Gould's breathtaking save from Davie McPherson's volley seconds before the breakthrough.

The goalkeeper, however, could do nothing to prevent Hearts from going in front after Guerin's cross went over his head and found Adam propelling himself forward to direct a header into the bottom right-hand corner of the net.

Henrik Larsson, who offers Celtic the bulk of their creativity and threat in every area of their opponents' half and has scored 10 league goals this season, was noticeably lacking his characteristic sharpness and his team-mates suffered as a consequence.

Adam put a tangible seal on Hearts' superiority in the 49th minute when he took advantage of defensive laxity. Stephane Mahe lost possession of a ball which was quickly fed to Jim Hamilton, who moved forward and delivered an inviting cross which Adam turned behind Gould. The Celtic defence protested that Hamilton was offside, but the referee was unmoved.

Slovakian Lubomir Moravcik. was replaced by a teenager, Mark Burchill, but youthful exuberance fared no better than a wealth of experience.

When Larsson skied the ball several yards over the bar it was indicative of two things - a night of unrelenting gloom for the Swede and the points being held securely by Hearts.

In injury time, Celtic were denied a penalty claim when Flogel appeared to handle an O'Donnell cross but nothing was given.

Afterwards, Hearts' manager Jim Jefferies revealed the Tynecastle club have rejected an offer for talented winger Neil McCann, understood to be from Rangers.

Jefferies revealed McCann's possible departure lies in the player's own hands because of a clause inserted into the Scotland prospect's contract allowing him to move if the price is right.

"It is out of our hands when it reaches a certain level. He has a clause if there was an offer at a certain level then it is his decision," said Jefferies.

"It would have to be a substantial offer to move him from here so we will have to wait and see what develops."