The SPFL faces an easy decision and it must rule on Celtic’s behalf.

The decision by Celtic to tell the Ibrox club that their fans will not be at Celtic Park unless they exclude the Union Brats from the allocation has done exactly what I expected it to do. The media is already shuffling towards the middle of the road.

One of the worst articles was by Matthew Lindsay, who claimed that the title race will somehow be tainted if there are none of their supporters at the game. That is an attempt to complicate what is, in truth, a very simple issue.

I’m going to tackle that idiot’s clownish piece – and the online strop from Tom English – in a separate article as there is so much rubbish in there that it requires a proper examination. This is not about him or the media. This is about the decision the SPFL will have to take.

When Celtic appears before the SPFL committee, or when the club presents its case, the argument will be straightforward.

Celtic has not excluded their supporters en masse. In fact, Celtic has made it clear that it will grant the full allocation, with one condition. That one specific fan group must not receive tickets. In light of what happened at Ibrox, that is not an unreasonable request.

Lindsay and others can play numbers games all they want by talking about a “small minority.” They know better than that. There were hundreds of those fans on the pitch, attempting to get to our supporters. Hundreds.

That was not some tiny handful of idiots. Any attempt to pretend otherwise is brazen nonsense, and we all know better.

Celtic has to provide an away allocation. That is 100% correct. But Celtic does not have to provide an away allocation to supporters who have sung racist songs and acted in a violent manner. Celtic can set rules on who gets into its own house.

Our club will rightly say that it is willing to abide by the letter of the law. There is nothing in the SPFL regulations that says Celtic must accept the dregs of Ibrox in order to get this done. We are obliged to provide a number of tickets. That is all. There is nothing in those rules that says we cannot set limits on who actually receives them.

The Ibrox club is talking about this setting a precedent.

Well, you know what? Maybe it will.

Maybe if there is another game where hundreds of masked fans carrying weapons charge onto a pitch to attack rival supporters, the club on the receiving end of that behaviour will act the same way.

Good. It should. If we want to drive this kind of conduct out of football stadiums, perhaps this will have some deterrent value. Celtic should be the club to say no more.

Those who see in this some left-handed attack on the Green Brigade need to calm down a little. Unless those people are claiming there is some moral equivalence between the Green Brigade singing songs and what the Ibrox fans did, there really is nothing to see here.

This has nothing to do with the Green Brigade. Show me the example of the Green Brigade charging onto a pitch to square-go rival fans. There isn’t one.

This is about the safety of our staff, the safety of our fans, the safety of our players and the integrity of our stadium.

Our club should make its stance crystal clear. Until the Ibrox club stops pandering to its psychotic element, there should be no more tickets for Celtic Park. If they want to wallow in that filth, if they want to pally up with a dangerous supporter organisation, that is up to them. They cannot make the rest of Scottish football live with that decision.

Those claiming this is some attempt to influence the title race need to be serious for five seconds. Are you kidding me?

We lived for a time with only a couple of hundred fans attending these games. When Celtic go to Tynecastle, we get such a meagre number of tickets its not worth applying. The Ibrox club will get a miniscule number when it goes there a week on Monday.

We should have worried about away-ticket allocations being weaponised to influence results years ago. This website raised the issue back then. Since then, Celtic have gone to Ibrox several times without any away supporters and still won.

So what is this nonsense? This is selective outrage. It is hypocritical, and Celtic should have no truck with it. We have asked clubs to introduce sensible minimum allocation rules, yet they still lock our fans out of games played in front of half-empty stands. This is Scottish football’s peculiar little madness, and if people only recognise now that it influences matches, they have arrived late to the point.

The SPFL committee will not rule that Ibrox fans should be excluded from Celtic Park, and our club is not asking it to. Celtic is insisting on its right to decide who enters its own stadium and who does not.

The request is straightforward. It is reasonable under the current circumstances, and that is the caveat we should not let these people ignore.

The media has hidden from this issue since the incident at Ibrox. Expecting clarity or honesty from them now asks too much. They are gutless frauds. They have always feared provoking Ibrox. When you see how Ibrox fans behave, that fear is understandable.

But that proves the point.

I suspect Police Scotland would welcome a solution that keeps them away from this altogether. People who claim it is better to have these individuals inside the ground than outside it talk nonsense, and we should treat it that way.

Seriously, when did large numbers of ticketless fans last gather outside a stadium during a match because they could not get in? They have plenty of pubs where they can watch it.

This sudden concern about letting fans watch their team is not something Scottish football has taken seriously over the last number of years, when many of us have called for more reasonable away allocations. Nobody gave a damn until now.

I have already covered the idea that this influences results. Certain clubs have used away allocations for that purpose for years. It is what Ibrox tried to do in the first place when it limited the number of Celtic fans allowed in its stadium. So, I am not interested in their squeals on that subject.

The thing we are going to learn here is whether the governing bodies are willing to govern.

Are they willing to act in the best interests of the game?

If the Union Brats are inside Celtic Park and cause the kind of mayhem they are capable of causing, will the SPFL personally accept liability for any harm that befalls our staff, players or supporters? Or will it finally grow a spine and confront what happened at Ibrox properly?

Because up until now, everyone in football’s governing bodies has run the other way from it. They won’t even discuss it in the clear and simple terms it deserves.

A set of supporters spilled out of the stand and onto the side of the pitch to celebrate an improbable victory at the home of their rivals. That is not exceptional. It is not even rare. It happens across football.

Should they have been prevented from getting onto the pitch in the first place? Perhaps, yes. But that is a stewarding and policing problem. Let’s not pretend that anything in that moment was unheard of across the game though.

What made it different was the reaction of the home fans.

Many hundreds of them spilled onto the pitch, masked and armed, to attack our supporters. That is the story. That is what happened. Until that exceptional event is acknowledged and dealt with, the game here remains in a very dangerous place.

Celtic has at least said, not in our house.

Now the governing body has to decide whether it accepts Celtic’s legitimate concerns, or whether it accepts responsibility for anything that happens at the match.

The Ibrox club wants to deal with individuals on an individual basis. It knows that is impossible when you are dealing with people dressed in identical clothes and wearing masks. Their problem is that they put themselves in this place when they cosied up to a fan group that had already caused them major problems.

This group has already embarrassed them in Europe with racist banners. It has openly threatened members of staff. It surrounded a team bus. Earlier in the season, their manager at the time needed a police escort out of a ground. I could go on and on, and this is all without mentioning links to serious organised crime.

The club cosying up to that group was an act of incomprehensible folly. I wrote about it at the time and said so. Now they are stuck with the consequences.

They had a simple choice to make after that game. They could get these people into line, or they could continue to feed their egos, stoke their grievances and foster their resentment. For no other reason than money, that club made its choice, demonstrating again how dependent it remains on the bigot pound.

They don’t want to get their house in order. And this is where the Green Brigade example does come to bear, but not in the way some people think.

Whilst the Union Brats are defended by the Ibrox club, Celtic can say that it has confronted its own issues with ultras. This is one of those times when our own fans would do well to maintain a strategic silence, no matter what their thoughts are on that issue.

Because the club is essentially correct here. Celtic has taken action. It has been seen to take action. When we sit at that panel, look at Ibrox’s representatives and tell them to get their house in order, we can claim that we have already done the same with ours.

That leaves the SPFL with a clear decision to make.

Celtic will say it has taken its responsibilities seriously. It will say it is not asking the Ibrox club to do anything it has not already done itself. Surely no club should support a fan group that behaves like this.

If that club will not get its house in order, then we have every right to decide who enters our stadium. The SPFL must now decide whether it takes our concerns seriously in light of what happened at Ibrox.

That is the only decision it needs to make.

As I’ve said here, Ibrox fans will be allowed into Celtic Park for that game. The SPFL regulations make that clear. The away club is entitled to a reasonable allocation, and Celtic has not rejected that outright. We are not contesting the rule. We have simply said that a specific fan group will not attend.

When you look at it properly, Celtic is not denying Ibrox fans the chance to watch their team. The Ibrox club is doing that. It chooses to put its hooligan element ahead of the rights of every other supporter. The press has missed that distinction, but it needs to be made.

If the SPFL tells Celtic that the fans who attacked our staff and players, and who would have attacked our supporters with their assorted weapons, must be part of the allocation, then Celtic should draw a line in the sand.

Celtic should say that if those fans must be included, then none of them will enter the ground. I do not know how this ends. A sanction will follow, and it will have to be proportionate. We will see what they decide.

If the SPFL wants to avoid a battle with Celtic that drags beyond this campaign, and if it wants to punish those responsible at Hampden and the club that lets these people inside, then it has only one rational choice. The SPFL board must take Celtic’s security concerns seriously and act on them.

There is no doubt about who caused the violence at Ibrox. There is no doubt about which group bears responsibility. The Ibrox club has not condemned them in any meaningful way. Instead, it has offered unwavering support. Its own statement makes clear that support continues.

That tells you everything about how seriously they take the problem.

Now the SPFL must take it seriously and rule in Celtic’s favour. The Ibrox club must not give tickets to that group. If the game has any sense left, any semblance of sanity, that is how this will go.

And by their choice, they will be judged.

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