Celtic’s Fixture List Was No Less Horrific Just Because The Split Has “Worked Out.”

So all is well that ends well, right?

The SPFL must be patting themselves on the back for a job well done, or so you’d think, eah? The fixture list concern, which many of us have harboured for many months now, has proved to be much ado about nothing.

The post-split fixtures don’t involve us visiting any ground for a third time, or the Ibrox club getting two free matches at home. So what was all the fuss about, eah?

That will be the party line from the game’s governors and the media both.

But it cannot hide the truth which we all recognise; but for a couple of late goals this could have been precisely the nightmare scenario we all envisaged, and although it wasn’t, there are still issues which arise from the way this season’s fixtures went.

Never in my living memory has our team had to visit, in a single group of ties, matches at Pittodrie, Tynecastle, Easter Road, Livingston, Motherwell and Ibrox.

Not only was it the hardest possible start to the season but by virtue of that it was our series of games for the run-in. Nobody would have bet on only three of those teams making it into the top six … the collapses at Hibs and Aberdeen are particularly difficult to comprehend.

But in more years than not, five out of those six would have been joining us after the split.

That’s where the safe money would have been when this campaign started; that would have secured not only a difficult campaign, but a post-split fixture list which, coincidentally, disadvantaged our team whilst handing the one at Ibrox a major lift.

As I wrote before, if you were trying to devise a fixture list which would have given Celtic the hardest possible time of it, for the whole campaign, this is what you would have devised and proposed, and I still wonder if it wouldn’t have been laughed out of whichever room you were in for being too obvious. If this is a coincidence, it’s a hell of a one.

The amazing thing, of course, is that we haven’t just weathered this storm but thrived under these conditions.

At the start of the season, the planners must have been rubbing their hands together at watching what looked like a general collapse … but very quickly this team got its act together and fought its way through the schedule with unbelievable poise and consistency.

Our triumph notwithstanding, the fixture list was a shocker and I’ll be very interested to see what they come up with next season for us. More interestingly, I’ll be interested to see what they come up with for Ibrox, since a lot of people have told me that this will all balance out in the next campaign. Why do I doubt that?