By Luca Menichetti

On Sunday, 2nd place Celtic and current league leaders Hearts face off in the Scottish Premiership at Parkhead. In their last face off at Tynecastle in October, Hearts came out victorious as 3-1 winners thanks to a Murray own goal, a Kyziridis strike and Shankland penalty to finish the job. This will be new Celtic boss Wilfried Nancy’s first test of many to impress the Celtic fans as he was announced on Wednesday night.

Celtic will be looking to get revenge on the Jambos. A win could put them top of the table with a game in hand. Celtic are going into this fixture with six league wins in six games under interim manager Martin O’Neill. Meanwhile, Derek McInnes’s side are struggling to return to their winning ways with one win in their last six games in league.

What makes this game so special is that Nancy sits in the Celtic dugout for the first time. Nancy arrived from MLS side Columbus Crew on a two- and half-year deal. He arrives at Parkhead with success from North America and will bring attacking football to the east end of Glasgow.

Colby Donovan against Hearts back in October at Tynecastle via Getty Images

So, with the Frenchman finally in charge, can the fans finally be satisfised with the board or will this be the final nail in the coffin. This comes after months of countless protests alongside an embarrassing Annual General Meeting (AGM) which resulted in chaos and the Celtic board ending the meeting early.

Meanwhile back in Gorgie, the magical run of the Jambos has come and gone. With the last recorded win going back to a 4-0 destruction of Steven Pressley’s Dundee team at the start of November. In recent games, the Jambos have also suffered their first defeat of the season from Jimmy Thelin’s Aberdeen side at Pittodrie just under two weeks ago.

The players should take full responsibility for this sudden drop in form. A good example of this is striker Claudio Braga who was once the league's top scorer, hasn’t netted since the end of October against St Mirren.

Scottish Premiership trophy via Getty Images

This fixture could be very telling in terms of who the league will fall to. Hearts have put up a solid fight in the race to the league title, but as the story always seems to go, it’s now the time for Celtic to grab hope from their hands.

Last season when Aberdeen went onto a dream start that had both Glasgow sides worried, beating Rangers at Pittodrie and snatching a draw after being two down against Celtic at Parkhead. All this momentum came crashing down, it all started with the 6-0 league cup semi-final defeat at Hampden defeat off Celtic two weeks after the draw.

Could we see this be the beginning of a similar story on Sunday for Hearts. Or is McInnes going to ruin the party for Celtic and go top.

Clash at the top of the table: Celtic v Hearts Preview