Kilmarnock’s decision to restrict Celtic’s fans to a single stand when we visit their ground in the League Cup is as crappy as it was expected. We know that the home support isn’t going to turn out in big numbers for that game, and this in spite of seeing off The Mooch and his team at the weekend. They will be lucky to get half a full house.
How much longer is the SPFL going to tolerate this, as an organisation? It’s an embarrassment. That game will be televised. What must people outside Scotland think watching a major cup tie in front of thousands of empty seats? It’s beyond a joke.
I’m beginning to think that the only way this issue is properly resolved – since nobody in the governing bodies seems to care and Celtic are inexplicably silent on it – is for sponsors to start saying “wait a minute here …” and I can’t help but think they will.
Celtic fans will get just under 4000 tickets for a 16,000 ground where the average attendance, including away fans, is just 7000. That is a scandal, but it’s what we’ve come to expect in this league which is plagued by selfishness and run on stupidity.
If major commercial partners do decide at some point that enough is enough then those who run the game here will only have themselves to blame for it. They have allowed this situation to spiral out of control, when fixing it would have been a simple matter of guaranteeing a minimum away ticket allocation based on the respective average crowds of the two clubs.
This is beyond a joke now. That game, which should be a showpiece for Scottish football, will instead show how backwards, parochial and small-minded our sport is instead. How long advertisers, sponsors and other commercial partners want to be associated with this mess is the question which might decide how long it lasts.
Sponsors kicking up a fuss isn’t going to happen, and even if they did it would fall on deaf ears. ViaPlay’s parent company have already announced they’re exiting the UK market, so I’m not sure they really care one way or the other. And quite frankly, fewer Celtic fans in attendance means more fans watching at home or at the pub, and that suits Viaplay just fine.
As for the rest of the sponsors… I really don’t think there’s anything they could say or do that would get the league or the SFA to act. The money they’re providing just isn’t big enough to make a difference as all the big name sponsors walked away years ago.
The rule should be the home team states the target allocation they try to sell leaving an area till last , if they dont fill that day before a game tickets get sent to Celtic. Its simple really. More importantly our incoming transfers need to ramp up. We have lost Starfelt and Jota from starting 11. We needed an extra CH BEFORE we lost Starfelt. Now we MUST relplace him at very least. I have been VERY underwhelmed by our recruitment this summer.
I think Celtic need to think about the worth of these competitions. The SPL now has millions at stake thanks to the CL. Everyone notes that this makes it difficult to blood youngsters in SPL games. There is too much talk of doubles and trebles. Play people breaking through in these cup games and take the consequences. Would you trade either of these competitions for 3 SPL points? I would. Play Lawal and Vata and Summers in these games. As you point out no one if going to be there anyway.
The celtic board should be telling killie to stick their allocation were the sun don’t shine,and then possibly the rest of these clowns might get the picture.
The seeds of this were sown many, many years ago when the change was made to allow home clubs to keep all gate money instead of a 50/50 split, a change which massively benefitted Celtic and Rangers but disadvantaged all the other clubs (although due to the oil boom Aberdeen did OK to begin with, and a relatively buoyant Dundee economy in the 70s and 80s meant United were in a reasonably good place, partly due to wee Jim’s miserliness) . The rest existed on scraps from visiting fans for decades but have now cut their cloth accordingly. We arent in much of a position to complain at other clubs doing this when we give visiting fans the worst seats in our stadium, and charge them a premium price for them too. Selfishness cuts both ways here, I’m afraid.
This goes all the way back to our ruling bodies who simply have no clue how to run football in Scotland and never have done the SPFL SHOULD
Be disbanded with emidiate effect before our sponsors tell us to fk offthey are an absolute disgrace.
I stay in spain for the lasts 6 year watched the tic since 1960 if clubs don’t want to fill grounds with away support they will die
God I pray we can surely one day get out this set up and have all my life!! We should gone decades ok even working our way through lower leagues down south be way better and we be away from these cretins and eventually be a club that doesn’t get played by second rate managers like the Aussie and plenty players before him! Also be amazing to not just to be away from ” Der Hun” but all the losers mentality self proclaimed ” diddy clubs” and that joke show on BBC ” off the ball” the validates these losers!