THE natural question to ponder when watching Kouassi Eboue struggle through a torrid 90 minutes in the midfield maelstrom at Tynecastle on Saturday lunchtime was what difference might it have made to Celtic had John McGinn been in there to help Scott Brown stand up to the Hearts heavy artillery of Peter Haring and Olly Lee?

Instead, the former Hibernian midfielder was almost 300 miles away from the capital running the show for his new club Aston Villa in their win over Wigan, laying on two goals in the 3-2 victory and using his formidable backside with the usual aplomb to hold off opponents and instantly announce himself as a fans’ favourite at Villa Park.

The remarkable thing to consider from a Celtic point of view is that it took the same fee – £2.8m – to land Eboue from Russian side Krasnodar that they eventually agreed with Hibs when their hand was forced by the intervention from Steve Bruce’s side.

It is probably true that McGinn was almost comically undervalued and Eboue was drastically over-valued, but there is no doubting which of the two represents value for money.

If Brendan Rodgers was making a point to his board as he pitched Eboue into the heart of what was always likely to be a battle that was beyond his capabilities at this stage of his career, only he really knows. But the message was certainly loud and clear that the understudies at Celtic are a fair way short of performing on such a stage as Tynecastle was at the weekend.

The folderol of a tumultuous week off the park for Celtic accompanied them into the capital, where they met an opponent that was by contrast fully focused on the task at hand, namely knocking Celtic completely out of their stride by any means fair or foul and keeping the full quota of points at their rambunctious fortress.

It made for a barnstorming contest that may have been low on quality for the purists, not that there seemed to be many of those present as the stadium rocked and roared at every crunching challenge or aerial battle won by their side, but it was settled by a moment straight out of the top drawer.

A fiercely-contested first half that the home side dominated gave way to a bright Celtic opening to the second period, but just when it seemed as though the visitors might have been finding their bearings, their old nemesis Kyle Lafferty popped up to knock them off their axis once more.

The outstanding Uche Ikpeazu, who ran his socks off as he bullied the Celtic backline all afternoon, showed that he has more than a hint of brains to go with his brawn as he brushed off Kieran Tierney and clipped the ball back to the edge of the area for the arriving Lafferty.

The Northern Irishman scored three times against Celtic last season, and, as he approached the ball without breaking his stride, there was an air of inevitability about the way he caught the ball so sweetly with the outside of his foot to volley home into the bottom corner past the helpless Craig Gordon.

Rodgers threw on some of his heavyweights in Odsonne Edouard, James Forrest and Tom Rogic as the champions tried to muster a counter-punch, but they found the defence of the brilliant Haring in front of the backline and the superb organisation of John Souttar too hard to break through. The uncapped centre-half was by some distance the superior of Jack Hendry at the other end of the field, marshalling the Hearts defence magnificently following the departure of Christophe Berra with a hamstring injury late in the first half.

It was all too much for the giddy home supporters, who filed out of Tynecastle with chants of “We’re going to win the league”. It is early days for that sort of chat, but who’s to say where this side can end up if they can continue to produce what they have in the opening fortnight of the season?

“I don’t know if we can challenge Celtic for the league,” said Haring. “Today we could, but the season is still young. We have taken it from game to game and we know that next week will be very tough again [away to Kilmarnock] and we need to play with the same energy as we did today and then maybe we can win again.”

Celtic now move on to the much more critical task for them of navigating the second leg of their Champions League qualifier against AEK Athens. Rodgers could likely have done without fielding questions about the rogue agent of wantaway defender Dedryck Boyata, and what he would give for a result in Greece to inject a little bit of sunshine into what has descended into a stormy old summer for his club.