Hearts need to stop wailing about injustice and ask why they really lost to Celtic.

I don’t know about you, but I am bored already listening to Hearts players and those associated with that club whingeing about the raw deal they think they got. I suspect most Celtic fans feel much the same way.

Cammy Devlin is the latest to be smarting about it. He is now mouthing off in the media about how he feels that what happened to them was “unjust.”

Losing football matches is now unjust. Not doing enough to get yourself over the line is now somehow an injustice. What is this nonsense Celtic fans are expected to listen to now?

We are still getting it in the neck over the penalty at Motherwell, but I am going to say out loud the part that nobody else seems willing to say out loud.

If Motherwell had not conceded that penalty in the last minute of that game, I still think Celtic would have won the title. If we had needed to beat Hearts by three clear goals at Celtic Park, I think we would have done it.

In the event, we scored three anyway.

I think that if we had started the game the way we finished it, at 100 miles an hour, we would have been a goal up inside the first ten minutes, two up by half-time, and Hearts would have reverted to exactly the tactics they eventually did.

Sitting back. Trying to soak up pressure.

Trying to hold on. They would have broken.

I have no doubt they would have broken.

Unjust? They think what happened to them was unjust? Maybe they should have defended better. Maybe they should have attacked with more intensity and fluency. Maybe they should not have left the Player of the Year on the bench.

They came to Celtic Park needing a draw to be champions. A draw against a side who had not beaten them all season. They sat back and tried to hold on. There is nothing unjust about what followed. They got what they deserved.

McInnes was facing the nightmare scenario I outlined on the podcast in the week of the game: if Hearts needed a draw, there was no way they were getting it.

I’m not saying we absolutely, definitely would have won the title had we needed to win by three goals. But anyone pretending we definitely would not have done so is taking the piss.

It was well within our capabilities.

More than that, Hearts did exactly what I expected them to do. They cracked under the pressure of the occasion. They cracked when it mattered most, and they can complain all they like about hard luck now.

The hard-luck story will not save them. It will not change things.

I suppose now that they need a big distraction from the fact that their own club screwed up royally with the Shankland contract, we will get a fresh round of this.

The season is over. It is done. We are double winners.

Martin O’Neill gets to decide his future as a champion again. If he wants to stay, I think the job is his. I won’t like it. I won’t approve of it. But I will accept it, because that is how football sometimes works.

I would have accepted it had Hearts won the title. If they had been the better side over 38 games, I would have had to suck that up and take it like a man.

In the end, Celtic emerged victorious.

All Hearts are doing now is embarrassing themselves with this talk of injustice. There was no injustice here.

When your team goes into the final game of the season, first versus second, and needs only a draw, then it is in your hands.

No one took it away from you. No one robbed you. No one stole it.

It was in your hands.

Yes, that is tougher to accept than looking for some evil outside agency. It is harder than pretending someone exploited the rule book, or that Celtic control football from behind the scenes, or own all the referees, or whatever latest madness some people have chosen to believe. But just because some people believe something, that does not make it true.

Just because some people refuse to accept that the penalty kick was a correct decision, which I am absolutely convinced it was, that does not mean they get to talk errant nonsense about that being the result that defined the title race.

There were 37 other games.

Had Hearts’ away record been better, they would be champions.

Had they come to Celtic Park and got the result they needed, they would be champions.

They got decisions of their own all season long, some of them major decisions in crucial games. Nobody is going back to those now and talking about them, although if Hearts keep this up, a lot of us are going to feel very justified in doing so.

But what would be the point?

If you believe the hype, Hearts made a valiant effort. They can all hold their heads high. There is credit in what they managed to do. A team not expected to compete turned in a very credible campaign, looked like they might just make it, and came within four minutes of normal time of becoming champions.

If they really think they are the moral champions, if they really think they are the justified champions, then act like it.

Walk with your heads held high. Breathe the air. Enjoy life until the summer is over. Then go out and prove what you tell yourselves you know.

But the wailing and the whingeing and the moaning and the crying about it does not make you sound sure. It makes you sound like you are trying to convince other people, and yourselves.

It is boring now. Really boring.

It is not as if Hearts do not have things to sort out in their own house, just as we have things to sort out in ours.

There should be serious questions getting asked about how your captain was allowed to walk out of the club for free, and potentially to your second or third-place rivals. If you are not asking those questions, if you are going to focus instead on this grievance narrative, then your club continues to benefit from the distraction.

That is where you are now.

Grievance is protecting people who should be under pressure. It is stopping proper questions from being asked. That suits some people very nicely. But it will not change the league table. It will not bring back the title. It will not alter the fact that Hearts came to Celtic Park needing a draw and left with nothing.

That is not injustice. That is failure.

And the sooner they face it, the better for them.

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