Gordon Strachan is getting a touch narky these days – or at least fairly miffed. He conducted a tetchy postmatch interview at Tynecastle with Setanta TV’s likeable interviewer, Stuart Lovell, in which the Celtic manager took exception to Lovell’s admittedly mischievous question about the inability of Strachan’s team to keep a clean sheet on the road.

Strachan, contorting his face and squinting this way and that, reacted like a cuckolded husband to Lovell’s interrogation. “I thought I was here to talk about the match,” he complained.

As the title race shows a neck-and-neck quality, even over these still early furlongs, the Celtic manager is exhibiting classic managerial signs of prickliness. Tomorrow night comes the challenge of AC Milan and a point required in the San Siro, then the likely loss of Artur Boruc, the goalkeeper, to a knee operation soon after. The Celtic manager, as successful as he has been, has a lot to be agitated about.

In a separate development, Strachan is trying to cut down some of the media chores he must do as an Old Firm manager, on account of the fact that he doesn’t like too many of the journalists he is forced to deal with. There are one or two of us, frankly, that Strachan would happily lock up in a cellar.

Perhaps the last thing Strachan needed was this Tynecastle episode on Saturday. Leading 1-0 through a Scott McDonald goal as the game meandered into the second minute of injury time, Celtic’s chance to stay three points clear of Rangers at the top of the table was undone by Gary Caldwell’s blatant push on Ibrahim Tall in a scramble in the Celtic penalty area. Tall was going nowhere at the time, but Kenny Clark, the referee, was right to award the penalty, and Andrius Velicka thumped the ball past Boruc with seconds remaining.

As all this unfolded, Strachan was a picture of calm in the dugout, accepting his fate and graciously shaking hands with Stevie “Shaggy” Frail, the permanently harassed Heart of Midlothian coach.

Later, however, Celtic’s diminutive leader was not overly kind towards his opponents, especially given that Hearts, on top of all their industry, had enjoyed at least four decent chances to score in the match.

”We controlled the game,” Strachan said, stretching the truth somewhat. “I couldn’t see them scoring, and when they did it came out of the blue. I don’t know who was more surprised about it, us or them. I just couldn’t see it.”

Frankly, this did not seem the way to sum up a game between two teams separated by just one goal. Hearts, on their first-half chances alone, were surely worth their point.

There is no second-guessing this Hearts team, none at all. Some of their play on Saturday was extremely effective, with quick exchanges of passes between Laryea Kingston, Ruben Palazuelos and Audrius Ksanavicius building up occasional heads of steam.

It led to a series of chances through which Frail’s team might have taken the lead, had they possessed more poise in front of goal.

Yet Hearts are sitting in the SPL’s flabby midriff, plodding along with the odd inspiring performance. In truth, the team’s play is no more than a reflection of the way the club is run by their Lithuanian gang, which is to say uncertain and erratic. “I’ve told my players that the main difference between us and teams like Rangers or Celtic is that, when they win big games, they tend to go on a run of wins,” Frail said. “That’s what we need to do.”

Just about everyone in Scottish football likes Frail. Unlike Strachan, he attracts a lot of sympathisers, not least for his unfailing decency and talkativeness when repeatedly asked to try to explain the Hearts enigma. While working under a Russian head coach, Anatoly Korobochka, and a Bulgarian, Angel Chervenkov, Frail’s job is often impossible but, amid the confusion, he ploughs on.

Celtic took the lead in abysmal circumstances after 73 minutes – abysmal, that is, for this Hearts calamity called Anthony Basso. This goalkeeper, who like a lot in his trade is often called “a good shot-stopper”, made an utter hash of Paul Hartley’s free kick from 22 yards, jumping to his left too keenly while the ball began to swerve the opposite way. Hartley certainly struck the free kick well but Basso, at worst, should have been able to fist it clear. McDonald duly scampered in to meet Basso’s fumble and slam the ball into the net. “I just tried to hit the target, put a bit of swerve on it, and make the goalkeeper work,” Hartley said. “It was one of those ones where the goalkeeper just misjudged the bend on the ball, and maybe went for it too early.

“As all good strikers do, Scott followed it up – he’s been on fire recently. But we’re disappointed to have lost the late goal because we basically had this game sown up. We feel we should have been coming away with the three points.”

The Gorgie faithful weren’t sure how to treat Hartley and Steven Pressley, two former maroon heroes who were back in the green-and-white of Celtic. They seemed caught between abusing the pair and, as Hartley later admitted with a chuckle, doling out stick to Caldwell and Scott Brown, two former Hibernian players in Celtic’s ranks.

Pressley was a sight to behold throughout the 90 minutes: a big, gangling, giraffe of a centre half who, having been out of competitive football since May, looked awkward at first but no less steadfast for all that. Pressley, bearded and almost Viking-like, looks the original old warhorse.

Strachan’s pique was made complete in the 92nd minute when Ksanavicius’s shot was blocked by Boruc, only for the ball to spin up into the air. Caldwell was beaten to it by Tall, who was barged to the ground. Velicka did the rest, emphatically.

How they rated

Hearts (4-1-4-1) A Basso 4 R Neilson 5 C Berra 5 I Tall 5 J Concalves 6 M Zaliukas 6 A Driver 5 L Kingston Y 7 R Palazuelos Y 5 A Ksanavicius 7 C Nade 4 Substitutes C Elliot (M Zaliukas, 79min), S Mikoliuna, (R Palazuelos, 79), A Velicka (C Nade, 71) Not used Banks, Wallace, McGowan, Ivaskevicius

Celtic (4-4-2) A Boruc 6 G Caldwell 4 S McManus 5 S Pressley 6 D O’Dea 5 A McGeady 6 S Brown 6 P Hartley 5 J Jarosik 6 S McDonald Y 8 J V of Hesselink 6 Substitutes C Killen (J V of Hesselink , 86) Not used Mark Brown, Zurawski, Donati, Sno, Riordan, Caddis

Referee: K Clark
Attendance 16,454