As the SPFL prepares its decision, Celtic’s case is stronger than Ibrox will admit.

Tomorrow, the SPFL will render its decision on whether or not to take Celtic’s security concerns over the presence of the Union Brats seriously.

It will take that decision regardless of how Barry Ferguson or Ian Durrant will feel about it if they rule in Celtic’s favour.

That national newspapers printed their raging, spitting, furious and moronic statements and pretends that’s journalism is a joke. It is one of the media’s many sins. This article will be focussed on another of them; we may, or may not, get around to Ferguson and Durrant and their rabid nonsense tomorrow.

The g0verning body has a very big decision to make. It has to consider the context of the fixture in light of what happened at Ibrox. It also has to consider that Celtic has not refused an away allocation. Celtic has only refused an away allocation which includes a specific group of supporters.

Today, Mark Pirie of the Daily Record went out of his way to claim that the situation from February 2024, when the Ibrox club refused the Green Brigade an allocation for their ground for the women’s game against Celtic, does not set a precedent.

In that case, Celtic bristled at the idea that a section of our support might be excluded for no reason, and the Ibrox club then banned our supporters wholesale. Pirie argues that the SPFL will not consider that to be a precedent.

But of course, it did set one. Pirie knows that, and the SPFL will know it too. I have no doubt that Celtic will take that example to the governing body, because the core principle, at the centre of all this, has already been established.

A club has previously decided who it would and would not allow into its stadium on security grounds. When the away club would not cooperate, the away support lost its allocation. It’s just that simple. This is what they have enabled here.

There are a couple of points to make before we get to the heart of this.

First, Pirie and the Daily Record have arrived late, as usual. This is not an original idea. The Celtic Star covered the 2024 women’s game over a week ago and argued that it set a precedent. They were right.

They broke the story first, and they would know, because they provided the best coverage of the women’s team until the club shut them out, along with every other fan media outlet, in an act of malice and spite.

The Star covered those games. They know exactly what happened. The Ibrox club excluded the Green Brigade without good reason.

We are not trying to exclude the Union Brats without cause. High-profile incidents have made that clear. The attack on our players and coaching staff, and what could have turned into an all-out assault on our fans at Ibrox, stands as the most obvious example. That is why Celtic has taken this action.

That is the crucial difference. Celtic has clear reasons. The Ibrox club did not.

But the two situations still share one key point. The Ibrox club acted first. It told Celtic which fans should and should not receive tickets. That fact makes things uncomfortable for everyone on the other side of this debate.

But it remains a fact. The SPFL will have to consider it. Ibrox can claim that no right t0 exclude rivals fans exists, except that it already acted as if it did. Everything else is a smokescreen.

Pirie tries to raise the point that Police Scotland would not have been happy about providing extra officers for that women’s game, but that does not cut the way he thinks it does.

Police Scotland is not the issue here. The Ibrox club took the decision itself.

It said its own security staff had looked at the game and considered it an unacceptable level of risk.

That is the point.

Pirie bringing Police Scotland’s position into it after the fact does not erase the precedent.

Police Scotland may not have liked the situation, but the club did not act on Police Scotland’s advice. To conflate those two issues is disingenuous, which is exactly what we expect from that rag.

This is what Pirie writes about the Police Scotland situation:

“The need to go from a no-police fixture to deploying officers at short notice is a major factor, and a large police presence is expected at Celtic Park on May 10. Additionally, while the SWPL smashed several attendance records in the 2023/24 campaign, the crowd size would have been more manageable than a sell-out at Ibrox or Celtic Park.”

I don’t know if he realises it, but he has made the point for Celtic.

The crowd size would have been more manageable with or without the Green Brigade. With all due respect to the women’s game in Scotland, we all know the men’s fixture is in a different category entirely in terms of intensity, profile and risk.

One day, this club may take women’s football seriously by properly funding the team.

But for now, the men’s game remains where the high-profile problems pile up.

The circumstances of this game have turbocharged the potential for a very grim outcome. The Ibrox club may arrive at Celtic Park knowing that its league campaign has already disintegrated, and knowing that we can officially end it. Our concerns are therefore much greater than anything that existed around the 2024 women’s fixture. The potential for serious trouble is far in excess of what existed then, and everyone knows it.

There is no part of this that weakens Celtic’s case. There is no aspect of it that points towards the SPFL doing anything other than backing our club’s position.

Let me repeat the key point.

We are not banning Ibrox fans en masse from this game. If the Ibrox club takes the sensible and rational decision to punish the group which invaded the pitch masked and armed, then 2,500 of its supporters will be inside Celtic Park as per the previous agreement.

It is the Ibrox club itself which is depriving those supporters of that opportunity by backing its most hardcore element. That distinction matters.

It is the distinction the media keeps trying to blur.

The decision tomorrow has to come down on the side of common sense. Given the precedent, the circumstances and the potential for serious disorder, I don’t see that the SPFL has any other sensible option.

Unless, of course, it wants to be held responsible for anything that follows.

I am very sure that this is the position Celtic will present. We should present it clearly and forcefully. The principle has already been conceded, the risk is obvious and the request is reasonable. The SPFL does not need to invent a solution here.

It only needs to come down on our side, because it’s the right thing to do.

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