A fairer way to decide the leagues?
Several clubs, including Hibs, can rightly feel aggrieved by the way the season has or will be decided. Hibs have more points in the bag than St Johnstone and have one win, one draw and no defeats in matches against them but find themselves below them in the league because St Johnstone had one game in hand. That game was at Ibrox and Saints were unlikely to win it so if it had been played Hibs would have been awarded sixth place instead of seventh. additionally, each club had different teams to play in the now-abandoned end of the season so the PPG approach is intrinsically unfair. I think a fairer approach would have been to apply an average ppg on a head to head basis for the games that still have to be played. For example, Hibs record against Aberdeen was 1W 1D 1L - four points from three games - so Hibs would have got 1.33 points for the remaining game. This broadly ties in with the head to head approach used in World Cup group games.
I've done a very quick analysis of games to be played on this basis, firstly applying it to Partick Thistle as they seemed to be the hardest hit by the method used. This showed that Thistle would have comfortably avoided the drop at the expense of Queen of the South. I then went on to apply it to the Premiership and this shows that Hibs would have made the top six by a couple of points. That would then have led to the following tables:
Top six
Celtic 100.33 points
Sevco 82.17
Aberdeen 58.5
Motherwell 54.66
Livingston 45.83
Hibs 45.33
Bottom six
St Johnstone 44.33
St Mirren 44.17
Kilmarnock 43.5
Ross County 37.33
Hamilton 34.17
Hearts 27.83
Of course this doesn't take account of home advantage or the fact that Hibs were improving under Jack Ross while Hearts were deteriorating under their new manager, but it shows that the clubs that have a genuine grievance were Aberdeen, Hibs and St Mirren, while Hearts got exactly what they deserved.