Celtic fans deserve better than the sneering contempt of our media class.

One of the great frustrations of being a Celtic fan writer is that you have to deal, almost daily, with people pushing discredited nonsense that you feel obliged to counter. Sometimes you can let things go. Sometimes you can ignore them. However, this week was not one of those times.

At some point, I was always going to write about the conversation between two of the most spectacularly ill-informed voices in Scottish football commentary, Tam McManus and Alan Rough. The subject was tickets for Ibrox.

Both men spoke from the perspective of people who have not had to pay their way into a football match for years, if ever. They sit inside the commentariat, cushioned from the realities of ordinary supporters. McManus, of course, lived inside the professional bubble as a player before stepping into the media one.

In short, these are people who have taken plenty out of the game, yet who show open contempt for the people who put everything into it. Their attitude towards supporters, particularly those who think for themselves, has been obvious for years. This time, however, their latest suggestion crossed a line.

They argued that fans who boycotted the Dundee game should be punished by being denied eligibility for tickets for the Ibrox cup tie.

On several levels, that idea is offensive.

First of all, it reflects the kind of thinking that only comes from life inside an ivory tower, where ordinary supporters are viewed not as people but as a resource to be managed and controlled. In other words, it is pure condescension towards the people who make the game what it is. It was not for nothing that Jock Stein said football without fans is nothing.

Quite simply, everything about this idea stinks. The arrogance. The presumption. The complete lack of logic behind how such a policy would even work. Seriously, how far removed from reality do you have to be to think that sounds reasonable?

They want to punish people for exercising a basic choice: the right to attend or not attend a football match. In any other industry, that is called customer choice. Elsewhere, it would be recognised as people making a judgement about whether they want to participate in something they believe takes advantage of their loyalty.

At the very least, that might generate understanding. Instead, these commentators frame it as disloyalty. They frame it as betrayal. They talk about punishment.

Let me make this personal.

My old man was one of the people who boycotted that game. He is one of the most committed Celtic supporters I know. He did not even boycott during the Celts for Change years. For him, the decision was enormous. It troubled him. It weighed on him.

Importantly, he was not alone. I know many people who struggled with the same dilemma, the same conflict, the same regret that it had come to that point.

So, if anyone wants to call people like him traitors or fair-weather supporters, they had better hope I never hear it.

I have already fallen out with people on social media for pushing that nonsense. Frankly, I have nothing but contempt for those who make those claims without knowing the people involved and without understanding what went into that decision.

The reality is this. Every single person who took part in that boycott did so out of love for the club.

No football supporter chooses to stay away lightly. Nobody who goes every week sits at home unless they feel they have to. Only someone who has never faced that choice could fail to understand it.

That is exactly why I hold so many online loudmouths in such contempt. Many of them do not go to games. Many of them could not find Celtic Park without Google Maps. Yet, they lecture others about loyalty.

Meanwhile, McManus and Rough speak as people who have not paid their way into a match for years. The truth is, the problem is not that they have forgotten what being a supporter means. It is that they never really understood it in the first place.

Now, let’s set the emotion aside and look at the practical reality.

Once you do that, their proposal collapses almost immediately. Logistically, it is a non-starter. In fact, I would genuinely like to hear them explain how it would work.

To begin with, how exactly would you identify the boycotters? Would you create a register of people who were not in their seats? More importantly, how would you even know?

You cannot track it through ticket purchases. My old man had already bought his ticket through the home cup scheme. He paid for it and chose not to go. I know many others who did exactly the same. In fact, many thousands of those empty seats were already purchased weeks before the boycott was called.

Think about what that means.

Then there is another problem. How do you distinguish between someone who boycotted and someone who simply could not attend? Illness. Work. Family. Travel. Life happens. So, are those people to be punished as well?

This is what happens when an idea is born in ignorance and never tested against reality. It sounds clever in a studio. However, it collapses the moment you think about it for more than thirty seconds. It must have seemed like a good idea when they rubbed together their single brain cell each to come up with it.

And frankly, that tells you everything about the level of thought that went into it.

They are not alone in pushing the line that boycotters are somehow lesser supporters, or hypocrites for wanting to attend future games. However, they were among the first to suggest turning that resentment into actual policy.

That, in turn, points to something deeper.

It reflects the contempt much of the football commentariat holds for modern supporters. You see it everywhere. In their hostility to fan culture. To banners and songs. To atmosphere and politics and colour and noise. Most of all, you see it in their discomfort when supporters exercise power.

They do not like fans thinking independently. They do not like fans organising. These people do not like fans influencing the narrative. Above all, they do not like the rise of fan media, which has taken a large share of their audience, their relevance and their authority.

So here is the truth.

If your view of the game is that supporters exist only to pay their money, sit down, stay quiet and never question anything, then you never deserved influence in the first place.

Because fans are not just passive participants.

They are the game.

And ultimately, anyone who does not understand that has no business trying to moralise, and certainly does not have the wit to sound as smart as they think they are.