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Sevco Has Cut The Celtic Fans Ibrox Allocation. Our Club Will Almost Certainly Respond In Kind.

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Sevco has tonight announced, to the delight of their fans, that they are taking a decision to cut the away supporter allocation at Ibrox – for all supporters, of all clubs – to around 800.

Call this decision whatever you like.

It’s an obvious act of spite and an attempt to improve results at their ground, but do not doubt that it will have an impact on how our club treats them.

I’ve spoke to a lot of supporter reps from Celtic, and to the club itself on this matter.

Celtic has long anticipated a move like this.

From what I was led to believe, Celtic has taken on board everything our fans have said in the past about no longer wanting Sevco fans in our stadium, and they always held off on either cutting their allocation out completely or reducing the number to the bare minimum because our supporters by and large didn’t support the idea if it meant cuts to the away allocation.

The away allocation is now cut dramatically, by seven thousand.

They have decimated it, in the true sense of that word.

It is a move almost – but not quite – without precedent.

Only Rangers’ decision to ban Celtic fans from their ground for one match in the David Murray era ever broke this unwritten rule.

Sevco’s current board doesn’t care a jot about convention or precedent, and when it comes to them neither should we.

There is a whole lot of crowd-pleasing going on over there right now.

This is another act in that vein, a petty, spiteful strike, something to appeal to their lowest common denominator. Their fans are cock-a-hoop over this, and I can sort of understand why. Their demented belief that this is some kind of karmic justice is second only to their hope that it will give them some kind of advantage.

But a lot of our supporters are grossly inconvenienced by the presence of Sevco fans at our ground. A lot of them give up their season tickets for those games. It’s time that came to an end. It’s time our club thought long and hard about whether they should be in our stadium at all.

A cut to their allocation should be more or less automatic at this point.

I believe the timing of this news has caught our club completely off guard, so don’t expect an immediate response.

But expect one in due course.

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