Celtic Has Won Every Major Battle Of The Ticket War. Ibrox’s CEO Should Never Say Never.

The Ibrox CEO went in front of his own fans the other day, for the latest of their “fan forums” and had to explain why they have basically been beaten by Celtic in terms of having to hand over more tickets to our fans from next season.

His contention is that we shouldn’t be too happy about it, as they will “never” go above the 5% allocation we’ve just been given.

Those comments should be bookmarked for the future.

I have a lot more to write on that “fan forum” later on … but for now what’s obvious is that these people simply refuse to learn. They refuse to heed the lessons of history. To say “never” in this scenario is madness. It is even stupider when you put it in the context he has.

They never wanted to give us 5%. They never wanted to go above the 700 they had initially offered. But they have been wrong-footed and outfought by Celtic at every turn here.

They were stunned by some of the moves we made during this, from refusing tickets to banning their fans. The SPFL did not want to be involved in this; we dragged them in.

Their club looks ridiculous as a result of this stuff, and it should be noted that he was there apologising to fans who he gave a categorical assurance to that they would not have to move out of their seats for these matches, and he was basically telling them that “yeah you will have to move after all.”

Which is hilarious, and must have been thoroughly embarrassing for him and for everyone in the room who realised what that meant.

He said that they only accepted this settlement because a much bigger one would have been “forced” on them at another time.

I am glad he realises that. But that possibility hasn’t been put to bed with this; far from it. This is nothing more than a gentleman’s agreement between two clubs and the league. It has no legal force and effect at all.

The issue with away fans isn’t dead and buried; there will be another tilt at solving this problem at the league-wide level and so 5% might not be the last word.

In fact, it’s almost certainly not going to be, and as the CEO of a club he absolutely has to know that … and whilst I am reluctant to say that he walked into that room and told those people lies, he’s at the very least being disingenuous, and there is no doubt at all that ruling it out is reckless and dumb.

In fact, it seems pretty obvious that all he did was indulge in a bit of macho posturing in an effort to turn a defeat into some kind of victory.

But by his own admission we have forced them into a humiliating retreat. To say, at this point “not one more step back” is more than tempting fate; it’s inviting further mortification and another grovelling apology to the people in that room.

Celtic can feel pretty pleased with how this has gone. We’ve won the key battles thus far. We’ve forced them from their “take it or leave it” position and into something they never wanted to do.

We’ve shown that we’re willing to go so far as to defy the governing bodies themselves in order to push this to a resolution on more acceptable terms … and we continue to hold over them the requirement that our safety concerns are met.

We know that not all of our safety concerns can be met. That ground is not a safe place for us to go. The club’s refusal to release a statement damning the supporters who threw objects at our players and staff shows how seriously they take even dangerous situations such as those; do not rule out Celtic expressing further concerns in public and threatening to reject tickets somewhere along the line. We retain that right. We certainly have the power.

And as long as we do, I would not, in their shoes, be talking big and drawing lines in the sand.

The very first thing they did when they cut our allocation was draw a line in the sand, and then little by little retreated back from it and we first crossed it and then drove a whole tank division across, and all they were able to do was run wailing to the SPFL with a demand that we be punished for it. And the result of that was the current settlement, on our terms.

I understand his need to play to the gallery.

But this isn’t over by a long way.

If they believed him when he said that it was, well more fool them … and more fool him too, because when he’s proved wrong he’s going to have to grovel all the harder.