Unless It’s On Our Terms, Celtic Should Reject Any Ibrox Ticket Offer Which Comes.

Today the rumour mill has churned out a good story; that we are on the brink of being offered nearly 3000 tickets for Ibrox. That’s a major jump from where we are but it’s still an awful long way from where we were, and I personally don’t think it’s enough.

But really, the feelings of people like myself – people who will probably never set foot inside that stadium again and do not want to – are a secondary consideration here if they are even that.

The only people who need to be satisfied are Celtic, and they basically have two criteria they have to think about.

First, do they think this settlement is fair? And that is not as easy a question to answer as you might immediately think it is.

Right from the start of this situation, Celtic has had to walk a very narrow strip of ground, and so far we’ve done that very well indeed.

We have mirrored their behaviour exactly, and although we have been accused of being petty and vindictive and although the club has been accused of pandering to the fans (although why it shouldn’t listen to the views of its supporters on this has never been properly explained; after all, it’s exactly what Ibrox did and that’s exactly how we got here) we have done none of those things.

But the decision we have to make now may make us seem that way.

Now we have to decide if we want to continue making them reciprocal offers. Because we’ve been messed about here to a fare-thee-well and a lot of people might think they’ve gotten a result if we simply accept their pitiful offer at this point.

There are elements of our support who wrongly, who might consider any “new normal” to be entirely on their terms, and I think the club would be right to take that into consideration.

But here’s how I see it; we have them on the ropes, and I see nothing to gain from letting them get back on their feet. A couple more punches and this really is over.

Secondly, and this, of course, is the more important consideration, this club has to decide whether any allocation cut and the housing of our fans in a smaller section of the ground, represents a truly safe environment. To be honest, it is difficult to believe that it will. I personally cannot see any way that any scenario where their fans are surrounding ours is safe.

Until it is we will refuse an allocation. There is a reason this story has leaked; they leaked it. They want to look as if they are trying to meet up halfway; this isn’t even halfway and if there aren’t some serious security measures put in place then it’s not even worth discussing.

You get the feeling that this is still a game to them. This is still them messing us about, but in a different way, and the thing is, even the offer shows the level they’ve been working at this whole time.

Because if they are seriously telling us that the derisive offers they made us in the past two years are all they can manage, then how can they up the number of tickets now?

At every stage here this lot have been at it, they’ve been pushing to see how much they can get away with and Celtic really shocked them when we refused our allocation and banned their fans.

And they know we can keep on doing that until the cows come home. Celtic fans know that our team has gone there in front of a 100% hostile crowd and gotten results.

They know we’re confident of doing that. They know they would struggle to do the same. So, whatever they had hoped to accomplish, whatever advantage they hoped to gain, is gone and the longer this goes on the less chance they have of ever having friendly fans at Celtic Park.

So, I am not surprised that they want to renegotiate, I am not surprised that they are throwing out offers, but still Celtic has to ask itself if they’ve suffered enough and if our fans are safe.

If we answer no to either of those questions we can, and we should, continue to refuse them tickets for our ground, because yeah, we’re entitled at this point to be petty and to seek a resolution on terms of our own because to all intents and purposes here, we’ve won.