YES.... If they have played their home games against the other top 6 teams then yes, they should play away from home.
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They must have known that Timmy, us, Hearts & Hibs would almost certainly all be in the top 6 before they drew up the fixtures. It is just more bias towards sevco.
Hibs were promoted so they would have been seeded in the bottom six.
The Wendies and Partick would have been seeded top six so - had it gone to expectations - our post split fixtures would have been:
Hearts, Rangers, Partick at home
Celtic and St Johnstone away.
As it stands tho with Hibs and Killie replacing Partick and St Johnstone then it's quite simple for us:
Hearts Rangers and Hibs at home
Celtic and Killie away.
I still don't really see what a better system to the split would be. If you want 35-40 games a season with even numbers of home/away then it just doesn't work numbers-wise unless you reduce the league back down to 10 teams or raise it all the way up to 18 teams. Even if you think an 18 team league is a great idea it's still like using a nuclear bomb to crack a nut because these uneven home/away games aren't that big a problem.
The only problem I have with the split is there was a season where Celtic had all but wrapped the league up and St Johnstone were chasing a European place. There was an uneven number of home/away games and despite Celtic having nothing to play for they still made St Johnstone get the extra away game to even it up (and tried to justify this with some nonsense about how it was evening up from previous seasons, despite the fact everyone knew it was because Celtic could never be seen to be disadvantaged). It was concrete proof that Celtic aren't playing under the same rules as the rest of us.
I think the split has some merit , but the current format should be scrapped and should never have been introduced because it is inherently unfair , due to the imbalance of home and away fixtures before the split. And of course there's potential unfairness after the split
A fairer system would be 14 teams playing each other home and away , which would be 26 games
Then the top 7 and bottom 7 split. Top 7 play each other home and away again , which would be 12 games. Same for the bottom 7.
Makes a total of 38 games , same as current format
I think the split has some merit , but the current format should be scrapped and should never have been introduced because it is inherently unfair , due to the imbalance of home and away fixtures before the split. And of course there's potential unfairness after the split
A fairer system would be 14 teams playing each other home and away , which would be 26 games
Then the top 7 and bottom 7 split. Top 7 play each other home and away again , which would be 12 games. Same for the bottom 7.
Makes a total of 38 games , same as current format
Beat me to it.
The split was carefully designed to achieve a number of objectives:
1 increase the number of teams in the top league from 10 to 12. This was supposed to make it more difficult for the top non-old firm clubs (like Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen, Dundee Utd) to be relegated.
2 Make sure the top non-cheeks clubs had 4 home games against the cheeks
3 Make sure the bottom non-cheeks had some home games against the cheeks.
in order to achieve these, they had to bring in a divide after 3 rounds. They did play at least one 44 game season but that was just a transition season.
They are trying to reduce the fear of relegation and maintain the incentive oof home games v the cheeks.
It is a stupid stupid system designed - like everything else in Scottish football - around Rangers and Celtic.
It's a laughing stock of a league when the teams in 7th and 8th can finish on more points than the team in 6th
like one season past:
http://i67.tinypic.com/28ipx09.jpg