ABANDONING the 2019/20 campaign, deciding final Ladbrokes Premiership placings on a points per game basis and crowning Celtic champions will never, if it ever gets the green light, be accepted by everyone in the Scottish game regardless of the logic behind the proposal.

Never mind that we are in the midst of the first global pandemic in a century, never mind that declaring the season null and void will have dire financial repercussions, never mind that playing the season to a finish when the shutdown is lifted will just prolong the pain and negatively impact on vital future revenue.

For many fans in this country, it will simply be another example of institutional bias, of a corrupt system that favours the all-powerful Parkhead club, if it gets the go-ahead. Such is the nature of the sport here. Paranoia abounds.

Yet, the treble treble winners - who were 13 points clear of their nearest challengers Rangers in the Premiership table when football was suspended last month due to the Covid-19 outbreak having won nine and drawn just one of their 10 league games in 2020 - and their supporters will be able to cope with the inevitable jibes about a tainted title.

They are quite content that Neil Lennon’s team have once again been the most impressive and consistent performers in the top flight and deserve to win the Scottish title for a record-equalling ninth consecutive year.

Sure, they could mathematically still be caught. But could Steven Gerrard’s side, who have lost to Hearts, Kilmarnock and Hamilton and been held to draws by Aberdeen and St Johnstone in the Premiership this year, really recover from their slump in form and overtake them? No sane supporter expected it.

Alas, the cack-handed manner the vote into the resolution which was presented by the SPFL to their 42 member clubs last week – which called for the Championship, League 1 and League 2 to be curtailed now and the board to be given the power to do the same in the Premiership further down the line - has been handled now risks tarnishing their achievement.

By making the votes cast before an unofficial deadline on Friday evening public without the final outcome being known and then entering into protracted negotiations with Dundee – the Championship club who have the decisive vote - the SPFL have irrevocably compromised the entire process and left themselves open to accusations of rigging the result.

That the Dens Park club now know the power they hold is, irrespective of what actually happened to their mysterious missing email, nothing short of farcical. What sort of way is that to run a democratic ballot? It has lost any credibility.

But even before that jaw-dropping decision to publish the votes so far the resolution was flawed.

The take-it-or-leave-it nature of the proposal incensed clubs. They were adamant – even if SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan this weekend refuted this point – that loans could be advanced to them ahead of receiving their end-of-season prize money thus allowing them to debate the way ahead at greater length. They felt they were being held to ransom.

Time is clearly a factor here. With no regular income from matches coming in clubs need funds urgently in order to stay afloat. That will have been foremost in the minds of both the board and executive. Still, the lack of meaningful dialogue disturbed many. Not least Ann Budge of Hearts.

“This is not, in my view, how you honour the principle that it is up to the members to decide how to ensure the fairest approach is taken,” she said. “To dismiss all but one option and present only this option for a members’ vote, within a very limited timescale, must surely raise the question of whether the board is attempting to unduly influence the members decision making process.”

In addition, a commitment to consult with clubs over possible league reconstruction ahead of the 2020/21 campaign didn’t go nearly far enough. It still meant that chairmen, chief executives and managing directors, if they backed the plan, were harshly consigning Hearts, Partick Thistle and Stranraer to relegation during a devastating economic downturn.

It would have made far more sense to present a definite solution. Even if it was just a stop-gap measure for a season. A switch to a 14-10-10-10 set-up was the best option in the circumstances.

That will ensure no club drops down a division, Dundee United, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Raith Rovers, Falkirk, Cove Rangers and Edinburgh City will all be promoted and the Highland League and Lowland League winners move into the bottom tier.

Reaching a compromise which means that no club suffers unnecessarily would be, in these extraordinary times, quite a feat. So why wasn’t that possibility laid out more clearly? It would have made agreeing to the resolution far less painful and actually rather positive.

Of course, reconstruction will require a different vote at a later date. It will take an 11-1 majority for it to get cleared. By all accounts, Premiership clubs will lose out financially if their ranks swell next term. Recent events have hardly filled onlookers with hope.

However, Aberdeen, Celtic, Rangers, Hamilton, Hibernian, Kilmarnock, Livingston, Motherwell, Ross County, St Johnstone, St Mirren surely now have a moral obligation to agree to change next season. The reputation of the SPFL has taken a battering in recent days and rightly so. They can redeem themselves to an extent by doing the decent thing going forward.

But if Celtic are awarded the Premiership at the end of this whole sorry saga the accusations that foul play was afoot will not die down quickly if at all. It will leave an indelible stain on this particular piece of silverware.