Astonishing Ibrox Outburst Suggests That Celtic’s Aussie Friendly Will Go Ahead.

If you haven’t heard already, Ibrox has launched an astonishing – and I mean astonishing – attack on its own fans today.

I’ll get to that later, of course I will, but for now what does this mean for us?

Because it does impact on our club.

The Ibrox board’s reaction is so extreme that I can only assume that they see no way out of taking part in the Gutter Ball.

The protests and statements and foot stamping amongst their fans are primarily about that, and if there was the slightest chance that their club could withdraw from that gracefully and without sanction, they’d do it.

But they have looked into the abyss and decided not to bother.

I would imagine this also means that the organisers of the event are pushing forward with their plans in spite of rumours and suggestions to the contrary.

I cannot imagine that Ibrox would be reacting with this much fury towards their supporter organisations if there was a way for them all to kiss and make up and pretend everything’s fine.

They seem to be anticipating a drawn out battle, and they are right to do so in a sense, as I’ll talk about later.

But for now I can only presume that this is their way of dismissing some of the critics and declaring that they’ll solider on; in short, other than the rabid nature of the statement, which has the reek of lunacy about it, it’s what I expected.

The one area where this board of theirs will always ride roughshod over the wishes of the fans is when it comes to cold, hard cash and their need for it.

Their directors have precisely zero appetite for continuing to fund this loss-making business … there is no way that they were turning down what they claim is more money than they’ll make from the SPFL and paying fines on top of that because Billy Bigot is unhappy that they’re Celtic’s support act.

But I’ll say only this before I do my fuller piece on it later; their statement, which threatens retribution against their own fans, is about as bat-shit as anything they’ve released out of there in many a year, and that’s saying something.

Far from putting out the fire, they have poured petrol on the flames.

What a mess they have gotten themselves into over one friendly match against us.

This is why I said yesterday that in spite of our own anger our supporters have been amazingly restrained and measured about this, and I continue to applaud that in light of what is happening across town.

Their club is in meltdown over it … absolutely incredible.