Hibs could wrap up Euro race by end of next week - crunching the numbers in dash for third place

Time for maths. Everyone loves maths, right? Only if the answer suits you and your team …

Heading into the final five games of the Scottish Premiership season, plenty of Hibs fans will have been doing some quick sums to figure what their side need to guarantee finishing third come close of play on May 17. You might even have been reading about supercomputers and AI models working out the probability – somewhere in the region of 80 per cent, depending on your choice of algorithm – of David Gray’s men securing that Best of the Rest title behind Scotland’s big two.

If you’re more of an old-fashioned pencil and paper sort of numbers nerd, though, you’ll probably want to deal in certainties. Certainties? In Scottish football, they’re as rare as logic.

Yet there is comfort to be found in crunching the numbers. And statistical evidence to back up the gut feeling of most punters heading into the closing stretch.

The dream scenario as Hibs kill off nearest challengers

As soon as the post-split fixtures came out, everyone leapt to the same obvious conclusion. The SPFL have effectively front-loaded the drama in the race for third place, a prize that may well come with a guarantee of European group stage football, by pitting Hibs against their nearest rivals on the opening two weekends.

Among players and coaches, as well as punters, there is clearly a feeling that Hibs beating Aberdeen away this weekend, followed by a home win over Dundee United on Saturday week, might be just enough to get the job done. Looking at the table as things stand, that’s not a bad assumption.

An away win at Pittodrie on Saturday would, for starters, put Hibs on 56 points and leave the Dons on 50. Assuming Celtic take the chance to clinch the title by beating United at Tannadice, Jim Goodwin’s men would also find themselves six points adrift.

Gray’s side following up a victory in the Granite City by claiming another three points at home to United would effectively kill off the Tayside club, who would be nine points adrift with three games remaining – but miles behind Hibs in goal difference. They’d be gone.

Even Aberdeen picking up maximum points away to St Mirren in the second round of post-split fixtures, meanwhile, would leave them six behind. Fall to defeat in Paisley and, well, the Dons have an even worse goal difference than United.

In theory, then, Hibs could have everything tied up in just over a week. Will that theory survive its first encounter with reality?

Doing things the hard way

There is, of course, every chance that the battle for third place goes right to the final whistle on the last day of top-six action. And it’s not as if there are any guarantees, even as Hibs ride the momentum of an unbeaten league run stretching to a record-equalling 17 games, that Gray’s men will get the results need to see off a concerted challenge from either Aberdeen or Dundee United.

Since the introduction of the Scottish Premiership’s new-fangled split concept back in season 2000-01, Hibs have qualified for the top six on 11 different occasions. And their average points haul during the final five games against the very best? It works out at about four-and-a-quarter.

Gray, who likes a stats-based incentive for his players, will have noted that the maximum points haul of any Hibs team in the top-six mini-league is eight from a possible 15. That’s been done twice, under Neil Lennon in season 2017-18 and then Lee Johnson in the 2022-23 campaign.

Six points could effectively finish the race this year. But they’d have to be the RIGHT six points, in the opening two games.

And it all adds up to what, exactly?

Hibs clearly have to get the job done themselves. Which is what makes the format so much fun, regardless of the inevitable oddities which, this season, include Gray’s men travelling to play St Mirren away for a third time.

They could afford to drop points - maybe even lose - to one of Aberdeen or United. But slipping up against both would make life unnecessarily uncomfortable over the final week of fixtures, which sees them travel to Celtic Park and Paisley before welcoming Rangers to Easter Road on the closing weekend.

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Would Hibs fans enjoy going into that final fixture with calculations and permutations still up in the air? Calling that enjoyable would be, for some, like describing maths as fun.

If the final tallies come out in favour of the home side at Easter Road on that May afternoon, though, you won’t find anyone complaining about how Hibs got across the line. Just as long as they’re ahead of their main contenders – by just one point or even a single goal.

Then it’s all down to Celtic beating Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup final, meaning third-placed Hibs go straight into the Europa League play-offs, with a Europa Conference League group stage place guaranteed. All adding up nicely, when you put it like that.

Your next Hibs read: Winging to beat the Dons - a Tactics Zone Special on Saturday’s challenge at Pittodrie