Yang Hyun-jun red card proves costly as Celtic go down at Hearts

Hearts profited from Yang Hyun-jun’s early red card to inflict a second 2-0 defeat on title-chasing Celtic within the space of three months in an incident-packed cinch Premiership showdown at Tynecastle.

The Hoops arrived in Edinburgh knowing a victory would have taken them back to the top of the league after city rivals Rangers suffered a surprise 2-1 loss at home to Motherwell the previous day.

But their hopes of achieving this feat were badly undermined during a dramatic opening quarter of an hour in which their striker Adam Idah had a penalty saved by Zander Clark and then Yang saw red for a dangerous high challenge on Alex Cochrane.

Hearts – who defeated Brendan Rodgers’ side in Glasgow in mid-December – took full advantage of the extra man as Jorge Grant scored a penalty late in the first half before Lawrence Shankland struck his 27th goal of the season on a day when Scotland manager Steve Clarke and assistant John Carver were watching from the Tynecastle stand.

The victory moved the Jambos 13 points clear in third place.

Hearts made four changes to the team that started Wednesday’s 1-1 draw at home to city rivals Hibernian as Toby Sibbick, Dexter Lembikisa, Grant and Beni Baningime replaced Frankie Kent, Nathaniel Atkinson, Cammy Devlin and Kenneth Vargas.

There was one enforced alteration to the Celtic team that started the 7-1 midweek destruction of Dundee as captain Callum McGregor missed out with an Achilles issue. His place in midfield was taken by Paulo Bernardo.

Hearts made a bright start and they had a good chance in the eighth minute when Shankland’s cross from the right picked out Cochrane just inside the box but the left-wing-back got his shot all wrong and fluffed it well wide.

Then came a couple of