Aberdeen’s Ticket Allocation To Celtic Fans Is A Disgrace And They’ll Regret It.

Yesterday, Celtic fans got their allocation for Aberdeen and it’s an appalling number; a mere 1600 of our supporters will get to travel there for our return to action on 17 December.

This continues what has become an absurd trend; home sides cutting off their nose to spite their face. That game will be televised live. The idea that there will be a full house, the only thing that justifies locking thousands of paying customers out, is for the birds.

This is a sterling example of how a bad idea can spread from one place to another with rapid speed. This machismo strategy wherein clubs deprive themselves of money to prevent their home grounds being taken over by – the disgrace of it! – actual football fans has been sweeping across Scotland’s top flight now for the past couple of years.

And I don’t know how much money clubs have lost out of it, but I hope it’s a lot. Because only in this perverse little environment that we have up here could such a stupid idea gain traction and actually be held up as some kind of virtue.

I know that this bizarre idea was born with the fans of these clubs.

But if you were a director of one of them you’d spell it out to these folks in clear, uncompromising, terms; every penny that this policy costs us is money that isn’t out on the pitch. It’s just that simple.

Scottish football’s governing body should not be endorsing it either. The sight of all those empty seats at Pittodrie on the 17th will be beamed to every country where we want the game here to be taken seriously.

If clubs cannot demonstrate to the SPFL that they will fill their own stands for these sorts of matches they should be forced to up the allocation for visiting sides.

It was Jock Stein himself who said that “football without the fans is nothing.” It’s almost as if other sides in this country are determined to prove him wrong.

Aberdeen have not been great to our fans over the years – they have charged outrageously for our supporters to inhabit decrepit stands which for a long time didn’t even have cover – but at least we were allowed to attend matches in large numbers.

Their board, bowing to fan pressure, prefers it this way, the double embarrassment of being seen to deny paying customers their chance to watch their team and the knowledge being broadcast to all and sundry that even with a six week lay-off they can’t fill their own ground for a big game against the top side in the country.

And they think that’s a win. I can see, in part, why they might cling to it.

Let’s face it, it’s the only one they’re likely to get on the night.