Derek McInnes has his Celtic Park alibi. The trouble is, his own fans don’t buy it.

The other day, someone pointed me towards Hearts fan forums in the aftermath of the decision to send them to Celtic Park for their final league game of the season. What struck me at once was that the mood there was far less febrile than it has been in some corners of the media, and certainly far less febrile than it was on the forums of the Ibrox fans.

Hearts supporters, by and large, have taken this with a degree of equanimity, and they deserve credit for that. I do not hand them credit for much, but in this case they have earned it. Their responses have been reasonable. So too, by the way, has Derek McInnes. Their basic view is straightforward enough. They have to play these games anyway, and they have to win them anyway, so they will take them as they come.

Fair play to them for that.

Originally, this piece was going to be about McInnes himself. At the weekend he raised the spectre of the Glasgow clubs’ spending power yet again, and explained why it would be some kind of miracle if his side pulled this off. That line is both self-flattery and alibi-building at the same time, and it should be treated as both.

However, once I read those Hearts forums, the piece became something bigger. Because their own supporters can see, at least in some small way, that McInnes is constructing an alibi for himself, and they are not shy about saying so.

That, in fact, is one of the smartest things McInnes has done. He has built his case around a frame that puts him in what he probably sees as a no-lose situation. If Hearts win the title, then he becomes the miracle man, manager of the year by a landslide, manager of the century if some people in Scottish football have their way.

He becomes the man who overcame impossible odds, and that will be especially useful to those who have been banging the drum for him to take the Ibrox job for years. People like Keith Jackson, for example, who seem to think he was born for it.

But if Hearts lose? Then the story writes itself there too.

“Look at what we were competing against. Look at the money the Glasgow clubs have.

How were we ever supposed to top that?”

The thing is, it is almost convincing.

A lot of people in the media will buy it. In fact, most of them probably will. They will not question or probe it. They will just repeat it back to us as though it were self-evidently true, and yet it is a deeply troubling narrative all the same.

It is troubling because it ignores some very obvious details.

The mainstream media may not want to notice those details, but Hearts supporters can see them perfectly well.

First, Hearts had the lead, and they had the chance to bank it.

Secondly, both Glasgow clubs are going through historically dreadful seasons. That matters. It matters enormously. Hearts fans understand what I pointed out the other day. If they cannot win it now, in a campaign like this, then when exactly are they supposed to win it? The door has never been opened wider. The opportunity has never been more obvious.

Then there is the other crucial point, and it has become even more relevant after the result at Livingston. If Hearts do not win this title, it will not be because they were outspent. It will be because too many teams outside Glasgow took points off them.

That is what lies at the guts of it.

And the Hearts fans were ahead of me on this.

On those forums, they were already saying after the fixture list came out that if they fail to win the title, it will not be because the SPFL “supercomputer” cheated them by sending them to Celtic Park on the final day. It will be because they have consistently dropped points to teams in the bottom half of the table. That is not going away.

No matter how McInnes dresses it up, invoking Glasgow’s financial supremacy does not change that. One has nothing to do with the other. If you want to be taken seriously as a title-winning side, you have to be better than the clubs around you. Not just better in the glamour fixtures. Better across the full grind of the season.

That is what title-winning teams do.

And here is the thing. A lot of people will say this would be one of the worst titles in years if Celtic win it. I have already anticipated those arguments. It will not be a great advertisement for Scottish football. I said that myself in a lengthy piece last night. But if Celtic win it, then Celtic will still deserve it. Why?

Because over 38 games, our form will have been better than everyone else’s.

No matter what we are going through, no matter what nonsense has unfolded inside our own club, no matter what weaknesses there are in this squad, if we get over the line then we will have deserved it, because the league table does not lie.

The league table can exaggerate, certainly.

It can make a small gap look enormous because the points gap looks enormous.

It can also compress things and make teams look closer than they really are. Ange’s first season is a good example of that, and his second proved it when he blew everybody away with basically the same squad, without any great strengthening in the summer.

So yes, the table can exaggerate. But no, it does not lie.

And in a historically bad year for our club and for the one across the city, Hearts may still fail to do the job. Not because they have not shown themselves capable of matching us in the head-to-heads. They have. Fair enough. They absolutely have.

But because they have not done enough against everyone else, especially the teams in the bottom half. That is the bit McInnes would rather glide past.

He may think he has built the perfect argument and the perfect alibi. A lot of the mainstream media will be content to help him carry it. But convincing his own fans of that story may prove a slightly harder job.

Because they can see what the rest of us can see, and the truth is simpler than the spin. If Hearts do not win this title, it will not be because they had to come to Celtic Park on the last day. It will be because they had the chance of a lifetime and did not quite take it.

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