Whatever the fixture list, the split will feed conspiracy theories for years.

Last weekend, a lot of people expected that we might get the fixture list. We are not going to get it now for a few weeks. Dundee United’s victory over Celtic has made it virtually impossible for the authorities to release the post-split fixtures until all the games are complete and we know exactly how the top six is going to line up.

Let me be blunt. The post-split fixtures are a nightmare scenario of biblical proportions, and I do not think we have even scratched the surface of what they are going to involve.

You always hear talk of the SPFL supercomputer. It has always been garbage. The so-called supercomputer never picks the order of games on its own.

Human beings always shape the order of matches to ensure certain outcomes, or at least certain set-pieces in the calendar, such as a Glasgow derby around New Year. The computer is fed a list of inputs and conditions. It is not random, and there is no scenario in which these final fixtures will be random either.

There are so many potential nightmare scenarios in those fixtures that it is almost mind-bending to consider them. Some arise naturally from the table as it stands.

Others flow from people with big mouths spreading conspiracy theories and getting themselves, and possibly other people, into trouble. The potential for allegations of bias, manipulation, match-fixing and every other kind of nonsense is so extensive that the brain almost reels at the prospect of it.

Before we go any further, look clearly at where we stand right now. We are currently in third place. We are five points behind Hearts and two behind the Ibrox club. They are three behind Hearts. The margins are tiny, the stakes are huge, and that creates a number of serious problems. Those problems do not begin and end with our own results.

In theory, all three sides are sufficiently inconsistent that they could all drop points against each other and against the rest. Scottish football is never that straightforward, though, and we have never had a scenario quite like this one before. We are in this trouble, and this potentially hazardous situation is nobody’s fault but our own. It was clear going into the January window what the stakes could be for the second half of the campaign, and our board chose not to spend the money that might have given us an advantage.

Whatever the outcome of this season, that cannot be forgotten.

If you were trying to sabotage your own club, this would not be a bad way to go about it. The absence of strategic thought is almost breathtaking. The chances of a genuine Armageddon scenario for us are very real, and they were already very real in January when the window opened. Nobody at this club can pretend they did not know what the possible consequences might be. Everyone knew.

Everyone also knows that our fixture list is likely to send us to either Easter Road or Motherwell, and perhaps even both. We also know that we will have three games at home, one against Hearts and one against the Ibrox club.

Furthermore, the Ibrox side will have to visit both Celtic Park and Tynecastle, and quite possibly one of Motherwell or Hibs away as well.

Hearts’ situation is no less crazy. They have to come to Celtic Park for sure. They also have to go to Easter Road for sure. It is a mess, and the SPFL will be looking at it with something approaching dread.

Under normal circumstances there is a simple task in front of Celtic.

Win all seven games that are left and the chances are very good that you will be champions. In that scenario, it only takes Hearts losing once elsewhere, and they have sufficiently difficult fixtures for that to look plausible. Personally, I think that if we win seven out of seven, we will be champions.

Last week’s result against Dundee United is such a disaster because it has taken the issue partly out of our own hands. In a scenario where we have to win every game, the situation is perfectly clear. Win them and no one can do anything about it. The moment you have to depend on another club doing you a favour, everything gets murkier. That is where the illusion that this is straightforward becomes impossible to sustain.

If we go into the final five fixtures with the table looking anything like it does now, there are going to be roadblocks, landmines and complicating factors all over the place. There are so many non-neutral scenarios in those final fixtures that it will be an administrative nightmare to avoid the worst of them.

Allegations will fly. People will ask who benefited, who did what and why they did it. There is no clean ending to this. None. This title race will not be decided in isolation.

Nobody is going to win every remaining game. The minute you accept that all these sides are likely to drop points somewhere, you start to see where the problems arise.

For a start, there is the kingmaker problem.

It is a big one. The kingmaker problem says that the sides outside the top three could end up deciding the title race, because they are the teams who can take crucial points off Hearts or one of the Glasgow clubs and change everything.

Take Hibs first, because they are the most obvious example.

They still have to play Hearts, and that will be a blood-and-thunder, generation-defining game for them. If they beat Hearts, they will have done both Glasgow clubs a massive favour. The problem is that they also have to play both Glasgow clubs. Plenty of people will say that there are no circumstances in which Hibs, especially in front of a home crowd, can afford even the perception that they helped Hearts win the title.

Since they have to play both Glasgow clubs, there is simply no way to avoid that allegation hanging in the air.

I am not saying Hibs would cheat and throw a title towards Glasgow rather than let it go to Hearts. I am saying that if Hibs lose both of those games, people will say it anyway. If Hibs win one of them and hand Hearts an advantage, there will be members of the Hibs support who will not be happy either.

You could end up in the perverse situation of Hibs beating one of the Glasgow clubs at home and some of their own fans booing them off the park.

Motherwell ought to be free of that kind of complication, but there is a wrinkle there too. It comes in the form of the stupidity of Hugh Keevins, who could not resist throwing his own conspiracy theory into the mix.

When he wrote the other week that Motherwell manager Jens Berthel Askou had referred to Celtic as “we” in some private setting, according to someone close to him, he automatically cast a cloud over both the manager and the club.

It was an appalling thing for a mainstream journalist to do, but it adds yet another complicating factor to an already complicated situation.

There is also the media-led perception, one made worse by long-standing talk that a Hearts title would be an ideal scenario for the game here because it would break the Glasgow duopoly. We have heard versions of that argument before, and it should always have been challenged. It raises obvious questions about how officialdom, the media and the wider game frame this title race.

Once people start talking as though a particular outcome would be healthier for Scottish football, every result gets looked at through that lens.

You then have the old “anyone but Celtic” narrative, which has been pushed so often in parts of the media and elsewhere that it barely needs explaining. The idea that Celtic’s dominance is somehow bad for Scottish football has always been a dangerous line, because this is exactly where it leads. If any result in the run-in looks convenient, or appears to have had a decisive effect one way or another, there will be a major outcry. On phone-ins, on fan forums, in the press and across social media, people will scream bias, corruption and all sorts of other nonsense. The media, for its own reasons, will happily stir that pot.

That brings us to the Glasgow dilemma itself. This is the suggestion that neither Glasgow club will do anything that might hand the title to the other. In short, it is the theory that neither side will be especially motivated to beat Hearts if, in the final analysis, doing so benefits their local rivals.

This is perhaps the most toxic version of the whole debate. I know plenty of Celtic fans who, in the cold light of day, would rather see Hearts win the title than the Ibrox club. That means there will be some who would not be too devastated if we failed to beat Hearts at home in circumstances where a win for them might help them.

Needless to say, you are not going to find many Ibrox fans openly stating that they would want their side to beat Hearts if that result handed the title to Celtic.

At first glance, it seems open and shut.

If it comes down to a final day where the Ibrox club is at Tynecastle and the result directly influences the title race, people will assume they are not trying all that hard. The same would apply if Celtic faced Hearts in a game where a win handed the title to the Ibrox side. Most supporters understand that dynamic instinctively. They know what the crowd would think. They know what the narrative would be.

It looks simple. Even then, it is not.

There is another factor, and it is the one everyone is going to have to think about. Hearts have the advantage right now. They are top of the table right now. The likelihood is that one of the Glasgow clubs could be doomed to third place, and for Celtic, facing a summer rebuild of immense proportions, that is a catastrophic scenario.

We are not built for it at all. A third-place finish would be a cataclysm. There is no way we can afford to miss out on both Champions League money and the safer Europa League route if the rebuild is to be anything like the one we need.

That is the immense gamble our board has forced on us. We pretty much need to win this title. Anything else is deeply unpleasant.

The idea that we might throw a fixture is therefore incredibly dangerous, because right now that could doom us to third place. The idea that the Ibrox club could afford to throw a fixture is just as implausible. Whatever their fans might think, doing that and dropping to third would have enormous consequences for them as well.

Yet even that is not the end of it.

If the Ibrox club wins the title, they will likely go straight into the Champions League group stages. That would give them the financial boost they need to justify the risks they took in January. Anything less than the title means that gamble could blow up in their faces. Third place would make it explode spectacularly.

If we finish third and watch them walk into the Champions League groups, that becomes a year-zero moment for us. Our board would hand them momentum. For at least one season, it would create the conditions for them to lay down a serious marker for the future. The rage among Celtic supporters and in fan media would be off the scale. That risk is very real. Hearts winning the title reduces some of that damage because it stops the Ibrox club getting that automatic place.

However, it does not reduce the catastrophic damage we would do to ourselves if that outcome pushes us from second into third. The calculation at Ibrox will mirror that in reverse. Can they risk Celtic getting Champions League money and putting us back on a strong footing, even if trying to stop that risks dropping to third themselves?

My own cold-blooded view is simple.

We have to think about what is best for Celtic. I cannot see any scenario where finishing third is anything other than a disaster, regardless of who wins the title. The idea that we should throw a game against Hearts, just to benefit them and make it harder for the Ibrox club to win the league, is unthinkable if the downside risk is third place and the restructuring of our own club that would almost certainly follow.

The stakes are high for everybody involved. Once you get into that territory, you start asking hard questions.

Is David Gray at Hibs going to throw matches just to stop Hearts winning the league? You would think not.

Danny Rohl probably cannot afford not to try to win every game. A third-place finish for his side would be a serious blow to his chances of keeping his job. It would affect everything from money for a rebuild to his credibility in the stands.

There is no scenario I can see where Derek McInnes does not try to win every single match.

As for Askou, he will be doing everything he can to take as many points as possible.

You also have the players to consider.

Many of them will be on performance-related bonuses, and those will fluctuate depending on where teams finish in the league.

A third-place finish will not earn you much, if anything, at Celtic Park or Ibrox. It would be seen only as a failure of immense proportions. So, do I think players will throw games and managers will tank results? No. There is too much at stake for all of them, and no manager wants to live with the suggestion that he cheated.

The problem is that nobody has to actually throw a game for the allegation to surface. That is the real nightmare scenario. Those accusations are coming anyway.

Suspicions have already been seeded by idiots like Keevins. The mess exists whether or not anybody does anything wrong.

So, what do the governing bodies do about it?

They will try to resolve this in a way that removes the most explosive fixture combinations.

I think they will try to get Hearts’ games against both Glasgow clubs out of the way quickly. They will also try to schedule our game with the Ibrox club early.

I do not think they will want a final day where one club can clinch the title directly against another from the top three. Just think of the allegations if that happened.

Then again, is there really a scenario where one of the Glasgow clubs plays Hibs on the final day? The perception would be that Hibs would not try a leg if taking points might help their local rivals. That carries its own poison.

The truth is simple. No fixture scenario removes all the risks. Even if the SPFL tries, this will be incredibly difficult to engineer. If Celtic win the title now, people will cast aspersions on various clubs, especially Hibs and Motherwell. That will only intensify if either of those sides takes points off Hearts but not off us. It will be a vintage year for conspiracy theorists.

The simple fact is that this is no longer an ordinary title race.

Too many factors complicate it. This is now a collision between rivalry, money, perception, ego and fear. At least one club will walk away convinced an injustice has been done.

It is a mess. The governing bodies will have to sort it out. More than that, though, our own club has created this mess through complacency, arrogance, egotism, a lack of strategic foresight.

It is down to the basic incompetence of those running Celtic at senior level. We are in a full-blown crisis. We will not know the full effects for weeks yet.

That, more than anything else, makes this so frustrating.

If this title is being thrown away, our own club is throwing it away. If it ends up in the lap of Hearts or the Ibrox side, and God forbid we finish third, it will not be because Hibs laid down, or Motherwell refused to act as kingmakers.

It will not be because of some bizarre chain of conspiracies.

It will be because the people running Celtic did not do everything in their power to prepare us properly for the second half of this campaign.

They betrayed us. They are the ones who have actively conspired to throw this title away. For that, there has to be accountability.

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