St Johnstone fans know what forcing a u-turn on Celtic tickets will cost their club.

All football boards that communicate with fans can really offer them only one thing: honesty.

The board at St Johnstone has done exactly that in its attempt to sort out the ticketing situation for games involving the two Glasgow club’s next season. It has levelled with supporters. It has got in front of fan groups and told them straight what the deal is, what the costs will be, and what the trade-offs are.

That honesty is rare.

Celtic fans were to get three stands. Ibrox fans were to get three stands. St Johnstone supporters are not happy with that. They want the club to stick with two stands for away fans, and the club has told them plainly that this will have consequences.

That is how it should be. Paulina has already written a good piece on this subject, saying St Johnstone fans need to consider the effect on their own club. She is 100 per cent right. They do need to consider it, and to be fair, it seems that they have. Having weighed it all up, they still want the club to take away one of the stands from visiting supporters.

They know what it will cost. They know it comes out of the manager’s overall budget. They appear to be fine with that decision.

The club, for its part, has not simply relented. It has said that the only way St Johnstone fans can be given the third stand is if they sell enough season tickets to justify it. Even then, they are going to lose money on the deal.

That is the truth the club has laid out. If the numbers are there, it will act. But it will not pretend this is a profitable choice. It has made clear that this is, financially, an act of self-harm. The fans appear to welcome that.

Look, I understand supporters wanting their own ground filled with their own people. Nobody needs that explained to them. But we live in the real world, and St Johnstone are not filling McDiarmid Park every week. They are not going to do that. So they have choices to make, and those choices come with consequences.

I disagree with the position the fans are taking. I think it is self-defeating and short-sighted. For everyone who talks about Scottish football clubs lacking the budgets to close the gap on the bigger sides, this is part of the reason why.

It is not good enough simply to say this is about fans being moved from their seats. That is a problem, of course. We have had the same issue at Celtic Park, and our supporters are not happy about it either. But Celtic are not leaving money on the table. We sell our own seats. We sell every season ticket on offer.

St Johnstone do not. That is the difference.

The adults in the room have given the fans this one straight. The supporters’ representatives, whose job it is to negotiate with the club, have said they are willing to take the hit. They are willing to push the club to the point where it is bound by its own agreement not to close the standing section and hand it to away fans.

That is their right. But the club has also laid out the effect of that choice. Anything they do not sell in tickets comes out of the playing budget.

Supporters know their team needs every penny it can get. They know every penny possible has to go onto the pitch. They know what Championship football cost the club in hard cash. Yet they have still decided this is a price worth paying.

Maybe it is just me who struggles to understand that.

But they are adults. They have heard the facts. If this is the choice they have made, then so be it. The club should be willing to give them what they want if the agreed conditions are met.

That, at least, is how you treat supporters as intelligent, engaged stakeholders.

There is only one problem.

Every pound St Johnstone fans vote to take away from the club is money the manager does not have for signings and wages. If the club spends anyway, that cost has to be carried somewhere else. It will not be carried by the supporters who made the decision. If the club ends up carrying debt, that burden falls on the people whose job it is to balance the books or make up the shortfall.

That is a choice they should never be forced into.

I disagree with how St Johnstone fans are behaving here. Their club’s owners carried last year’s debt and are now asking for help. They are trying to make the books balance and promising more money for the team if that happens.

But the fans do not want to hear it.

The idea of three stands full of Celtic fans at McDiarmid Park is too much for them to bear. The idea of three-quarters of the ground being filled by Ibrox fans is too much for them to accept.

They have heard the argument.

They have weighed the odds. They have made an adult decision.

But at the end of the day, they are not the ones who will have to pay down the debt.

That does make it selfish.

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