Celtic opened up a three-point lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership with a 4-1 win at Hearts as Aberdeen's unbeaten league start ended in a 2-1 defeat at St Mirren on Saturday.

Rangers are now 11 points off the top after a 1-1 draw at home to Dundee United piled more pressure on under-fire manager Philippe Clement.

Celtic took full advantage of a bad day for the title rivals in the late kick-off at Tynecastle.

The Scottish champions took time to find their ryhthm before scoring four second-half goals.

Kyogo Furuhashi opened the scoring at the second attempt after his initial effort was saved by Craig Gordon.

Nicolas Kuhn then continued his fine form with the pick of the visitors' goals by rifling high into the net after a lightning counter-attack.

Adam Idah came off the bench to add two more for Celtic, either side of Hearts' reply through Musa Drammeh.

"I think if some of your nearest rivals drop points then you want to be able to take advantage of that even though it's very early on," said Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers.

"It's a little gap now but as I said, we've just got to focus on ourselves and just keep increasing it."

Aberdeen had matched Celtic for 11 games but finally slipped up in Paisley in one of many matches affected by dreadful weather conditions across the country.

Kick-off was delayed for an hour to clear snow off the pitch and St. Mirren warmed to their task quicker as Toyosi Olusanya opened the scoring.

Jamie McGrath equalised five minutes into the second half but Richard Taylor headed home a late winner for the home side.

Rangers were only able to close the gap on Aberdeen to eight points as they were booed off by disgruntled supporters.

The match at Ibrox was also delayed for almost an hour due to Dundee United's long delay in trying to get to Glasgow.

But the visitors started the brighter and led at half-time through Sam Dalby.

Vaclav Cerny equalised but Rangers could not find a winner to raise further doubt over their Belgian coach's future.

"We lose too many points. We're not where we want to be as a club," said Clement.

"We knew that before this game. So in that way it's two points again lost that we cannot lose.

"Last season we won these kind of games every time, even when it was difficult. We could push things over the line."