St Johnstone Fans Are Tasting Only What Celtic Fans Have Put Up With For Years.

First up, I think St Johnstone fans are 100% right to complain about excessive ticket prices, especially at the current time, and it is something that a lot of our fans will be saying to Celtic if the Champions League prices are not set at a reasonable level.

I have, and we should all have, sympathy for fans who feel they are being priced out of their football at this moment in time.

But here’s the thing; St Johnstone fans are getting a taste of what our fans – and those of Ibrox, who their barbs are aimed at – have been putting up with for years.

No supporters, perhaps anywhere in Britain, are so routinely screwed over.

For a while now this site has been raging at the sneering contempt shown to our supporters by clubs who have, for years, royally ripped us off. We are overcharged everywhere we go.

Their board’s know that that there are enough of our fans to buy tickets no matter what they charge and they have had a good old time over the years.

We have helped build some of their grounds, and now they talk about us as though we were gate-crashers.

Ross County slandered our supporters only a week or so ago and now they are reversing their own decision to limit the stands we get because their own sections of the ground had an embarrassing number of empty seats.

But it’s the pricing that has always riled our fans most, and talk of boycotts and other such stuff has been debated on and off for years.

St Johnstone fans are correct to focus on the cost of living and to demand a more realistic pricing plan … but let’s be honest here, nobody cried for our fans and nobody cries for them now when we’re being charged whopping sums for visiting their grounds.

I have long argued there seems to be a blind spot here; just because our club and the one across the city are wealthy in comparison to the rest of the league, I think sometimes that they forget that the bulk of our support is working class just like theirs.

Celtic fans do not, by and large, have more disposable income than the supporters of Aberdeen and Hearts and Hibs … but when Hibs visit Aberdeen the pricing policy is realistic whereas when we visit they stick a minimum of a tenner onto the cost.

The expense of going to football is outrageous.

Of course it is, and especially right now. I want to be on the side of the St Johnstone fans, but then I remember that in all the years we’ve moaned about this nobody has given a damn.