Celtic Fans Should Completely Ignore The Latest Media Lies Over Ibrox’s Ticket Panic.

Today half of the media is running absolute garbage about the ongoing Ibrox ticket row.

The Sun claims that Celtic is “set” to deny Ibrox tickets for Parkkhead; at no time has our club taken such a stand. Ibrox is “writing to the SPFL” on the matter to demand their allocation. Which Celtic was always going to give them, as I have little doubt our club will confirm in due course, and especially after this hysterical response.

At the same time, The Evening Times is running a piece stating that Celtic were handed a assurances from a “safety expert” which should have made us feel more able to take tickets for the Ibrox fixture. This one didn’t come from Chris Jack but from one of his colleagues at the paper, which is an old political party trick to cloak the actual source of the story.

I have little doubt that Paton got that particular story from Jack and that Jack got his story from Ibrox.

They could have just published it under Jack’s byline, but that would have given this away for what it is; utter garbage.

This latest series of articles reek of panic.

They are a pure PR stunt, the latest in a long line of them where this issue is concerned.

The Ibrox hierarchy is starting to flap.

They know the connotations, for the watching world, if there are no Celtic fans in that ground. They cannot paint it as “a standoff” because our club is not barring their fans from Parkhead, in spite of their lies in this regard.

They realise, perhaps, the full scale of their mistake here.

Ibrox cannot win if this debate is had on our terms, and our view on this – which reflects the reality of our situation – is that Ibrox is not a safe ground for our fans to visit.

There are two strands to this.

The first is to attempt to make it seem as if we’re continuing the “standoff” element of it – which they know will collapse the minute we confirm we’d have given them tickets to Parkhead anyway – and the second is to re-frame the security aspect of it, and they are cynically trying to claim that Celtic is over-reacting or worse.

But they dare not make that putrid claim on the record, because that would subject their nonsense to genuine scrutiny.

So what if Ibrox’s own security team feel that they can make the experience safe?

This is absolute rot. The idea that more stewards and police will make it safe is equally preposterous … and begs the following question; who was going to pay for those? Ibrox itself? Don’t count on it.

Imagine the brass neck to offer extra police as a solution to this problem anyway.

The police are a taxpayer funded entity; no wonder Ibrox treats them with such cavaleir disregard.

But if thousands of its officers are on duty there because their club wants to appease the Goon Squad amongst their own fanbase, I have to wonder what that means for policing in dozens of communities up and down the West of Scotland, and I have to wonder if this isn’t the moment when our political class steps in to point out how unacceptable the further allocation of police resources here would be … and to finally bring this situation to a head.

Not that it matters.

Because all the police can do anyway is form a ring around our fans to stop a physical attack on the ground. That does not keep our fans safe from the hail of bottles and other objects which targeted them, from all sides, the last time they set foot in that place.

As long as our fans are surrounded by theirs, they are in harms way.

Today’s reports offer no new information whatsoever.

Indeed, the piece by Andy Devlin in The Sun is a tissue of half truths and outright lies, the most egregious of which is contained in this line; “Rangers had hoped to resolve the matter, but Celtic have now made their position clear.”

We know, all of us, full well that Ibrox has no intention of resolving this matter, and this attempt to frame it around our club, as if this were somehow our fault, is scandalous. I’d say it represents a new low except I know that to be equally false; it’s difficult to imagine, knowing that publication’s sordid history, what it would have to do to find a “new low.”

The truth, as usual, is simple and our club is entirely in the right.

Ibrox presented Celtic with a security plan and their own evaluation of the risks, Celtic looked at it, recognised it for what it was – an almost complete dismissal of our concerns – and told them it was not acceptable.

This is no different than what happened last season, after that first visit to their ground, when Celtic was shocked by the complete disregard their officials showed towards our wholly legitimate worries for our fan’s safety on their next visit there.

Which is why we turned down tickets then.

We’re no more satisfied here than we were at that time, which is why we’ve turned them down now.

Celtic rejected those tickets on the advice of our own security team, and we did so after submitting a list of questions and raising a number of issues which Ibrox didn’t even come close to addressing.

That the media has been urged, again, to repeat and push Ibrox’s pitiful “demand” that we “honour” our commitments to give them tickets for Celtic Park, which there was never any prospect of us not doing, reveals their utter desperation as this game edges closer to being played.

Let’s stick with the facts; last year, we turned down tickets for their stadium on safety grounds, after our fans had been subjected to a 90 minute torrent of missiles and attacks.

They attempted to paint this as a “mutual” decision and turned down tickets for Celtic Park. This site and others claimed that their position was false; there was no “mutual agreement” to turn tickets down. They responded to what they knew would be a public relations nightmare by denying their own fans a chance to watch their team.

They cannot do that this season, and Celtic’s decision to continue boycotting their ground has wrong-footed them completely.

They have now basically admitted that their “concerns” of last season were groundless, and that their statements to the press were a fraud, just as we said they were at the time.

They want tickets for Celtic Park and are actually going to demand they get them … so what happened to their own concerns?

They never existed, as we said right from the start.

So our refusal to go to Ibrox makes them look dreadful. They are going to look like Hell in front of the whole world, and we’re going to make damned sure of it, and there’s nothing now that they can do to stop that except the one thing that they won’t do; get around the table and come to a genuine, equitable solution here.

Devlin and Paton have been played for fools, but let’s not give either of them any benefit of the doubt; they’ve played the role willingly, with their eyes wide open. They are Ibrox PR men today, not journalists.