So, the least surprising news of the weekend broke last night in the aftermath of the SFA verdict, which I have already written about and which remains a sham that this club has to resist as strongly as it possibly can.
That was a shocking decision to close off a shocking episode.
What followed was not shocking in the least, because of course the Ibrox club has now decided to limit Celtic’s ticket allocation for the League Cup game to a mere 300.
I have no idea how Celtic intends to respond to that.
I know how it should respond.
It should consider the agreement struck between the two clubs to be null and void. Tear it up. Bin it. Give them 300 tickets for the next game at Celtic Park and tell them they are lucky they are getting even that.
The Ibrox statement, in which they claim they remain willing to work with all stakeholders in the game, is laughable. It is transparent fiction. But that is not all that is going on here, because what we are simultaneously watching is a blatant attempt to screw Celtic and a campaign of distraction.
That is the real intent behind this.
They are trying to keep onside a fan base which is increasingly febrile and furious as their club continues to disintegrate on all fronts.
It really is so predictable.
Watch that club and watch the way it behaves. They held this announcement until after their European exit, and now it conveniently gives everybody something else to talk about after they went out of Europe to the fifth-placed team in the Czech Republic.
There are certainly elements of their support which will applaud this like performing seals being thrown a fish. There will be other sections of that support which see straight through it. Their intentions, though, do not change what Celtic’s response should be.
All the usual suspects in this game will find some way to blame Celtic for whatever happens next. If we restrict their tickets at Celtic Park to exactly the level they have now restricted ours, we will be blamed for that too.
Whatever happens, Celtic will get blamed.
The SFA verdict has made that abundantly clear.
So as far as I am concerned, we have nothing to lose by acting aggressively. In fact, we have everything to gain by acting aggressively and making it absolutely clear that this is a line they cannot cross without consequences.
The hypocrisy here is breathtaking.
Scottish Cup regulations entitled Celtic, as the away club, to claim up to 20% of the capacity at Ibrox. That is not an interpretation. Rule 29.1 expressly gives the away club that right and we simply exercised it as clubs have in the past.
The Ibrox club complained bitterly about that arrangement. They wanted the much smaller allocation which had come to apply to league fixtures between the clubs instead.
Now we have a League Cup tie, a competition run by the SPFL, and suddenly they have decided that the allocation principle which they themselves demanded should govern all matches between the teams can apparently be discarded as it suits them.
The SPFL announced in 2024 that Celtic and Ibrox had agreed that away allocations of around 5% of stadium capacity would return for SPFL matches between the clubs, subject to the necessary requirements being satisfied at both grounds.
This League Cup tie is an SPFL fixture.
So, if the Ibrox club is now going to reduce Celtic to 300 tickets, then as far as I am concerned the agreement has ceased to exist.
It is a brazen organisation which demands that a Scottish Cup tie should effectively be treated like a league game when it comes to away support, then turns around and treats an SPFL cup tie as though none of those same principles apply.
We are used to these mental gymnastics from the club across town.
We are used to watching them behave like this.
The SPFL does not have to permit it. And if the SPFL does permit it, then all bets are off and Celtic is perfectly entitled to respond in kind.
Celtic has to respond in kind.
It does not matter that this act of malice and spite is, in no small part, a deflection from the very real problems engulfing that club. We still have to deal with it on the basis that it is an act of malice and spite.
Obviously Celtic should take it to the governing body first. We should tell the SPFL that we regard this as a violation of the agreement which exists between the clubs and ask it to enforce the principles it previously claimed were so important.
But since none of us is particularly confident that avenue will bear fruit, or that the SPFL will suddenly step in and take our side, it may ultimately come down to Celtic taking unilateral action and daring the SPFL to do its worst.
If they are not willing to govern, if they are not willing to take their own responsibilities seriously, then once again we may have to do the job for them.
And we would not be acting as the aggressors. As I have said before, what Celtic supporters will expect from the club here is something exact and reciprocal.
A reasonable response. A proportionate response. Give them 300 tickets for the next game at Celtic Park and tell them that if they want to continue playing these games, Celtic will respond in kind to everything they do.
They have no intention of playing by any accepted set of rules. They have no intention of observing any accepted norms. Their statement is a joke. It is a statement written for a gallery of goons who otherwise might be breaking down their own front door.
And perhaps it buys them a little bit of time.
That time will run out pretty quickly if Aberdeen get a result on Sunday. If Celtic then goes to Ibrox with only 300 supporters and wins anyway, it will be a bloodbath, although hopefully not literally. Ibrox is very good at fighting these little tactical skirmishes. It is not nearly so impressive when it comes to strategy.
This should prove to be another one of those occasions where they act tough to appease their own supporters and eventually pay the price somewhere further down the line.
It is a no-win proposition. This ticket stunt will not indefinitely keep their supporters onside and it may not even hold. Either the SPFL might step in and alter the allocation, or Celtic cuts their allocation accordingly to the same number.
Either of those two outcomes is fine by me.
One of them has to happen. Anything less from Celtic will look absolutely gutless because it is perfectly obvious what we have to do.
If Celtic responds according to precedent, it will be Ibrox’s own supporters who suffer for this. If the SPFL eventually forces them into a retreat, they will look even more ridiculous than they do now. And if they want to make a song and dance about supporters invading the pitch, they might want to remember the mini pitch invasion involving their own support at Falkirk just before the split.
If you want to play these games, we can play them. But it gets pretty stupid after a while. And it must become pretty humiliating on the Ibrox side.
As Derek McInnes continues to flounder, everyone can see this for exactly what it is: a sop to the lunatic fringe at that club in an effort to stop the lunatic fringe turning on them. It is absolutely obvious that the Ibrox club continues to play with fire through its indulgence of those people.
The SFA verdict should have been much harder on them than it was, and the governing body is itself now guilty of playing games of appeasement when it should have taken genuinely robust action instead of turning everything into another plague-on-both-our-houses exercise. Ibrox’s little dalliance with its craziest supporters does not have a happy ending.
Not for the club. Not for its directors. Not for anybody associated with them.
Probably not for Scottish football either.
But that is Scottish football’s problem now. What Celtic has to decide is how to deal with the situation directly in front of us.
No Celtic supporter is going to be fooled by an attempt to play to the gallery. But that is not what Celtic would be doing by responding reciprocally.
Celtic would be acting according to precedent. Celtic would be acting according to the agreement. Celtic would be doing what Celtic has to do.
That club cannot be trusted, and it is long past time that we stopped indulging them as though it can. That club is not capable of acting responsibly or reasonably in any context, in any manner or in any situation, and Celtic needs to stop pretending otherwise.
We are not going to get good faith. There is no such thing across the city. From here on in, treating them the way they treat us is the only way this club can operate.
If it were down to the majority of Celtic supporters, I suspect we would simply ban them from Celtic Park and never let them return. In the absence of that, mirror their treatment of us. Let the so-called neutrals complain that Celtic is diluting the fixture.
Maybe the fixture needs to be diluted. Maybe this fixture simply needs to be washed clean of away support altogether.
Because then, when 50,000 people sing about being up to their knees in the blood of other people, nobody can blame Celtic supporters for provoking them. Nobody can wheel out whatever other excuse they want to deploy today, tomorrow or the day after that.
The Ibrox club has made its move. Now Celtic should make ours.
Three hundred. Not one ticket more.
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“..what we are simultaneously watching is a blatant attempt to screw Celtic and a campaign of distraction.”
You have never written a truer word, James. Deliberately designed to detract from all their failings in Europe and the Scottish Premiership so far. Celtic should respond in kind. I’d even go as far as telling them they’re getting ZERO seats at Celtic Park from now on. That we refuse to allow thugs bent on violence and bigotry into our stadium. Do that and watch the Scottish football authorities shit a brick at the publicity that would attract.
Please, Celtic, announce a permanent ban on their fans from our stadium.
I would tell them to ram their tickets up their arse
max 55 tickets for them
Lets just call an end to this whole charade. No tickets taken or given. It’s a better atmosphere without their bile polluting the air anyway. No more need to read about all this pish. We are not the club who are about to be begging our support to attend. Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves. I remember going to Ipox and getting 1/3 of the tickets. Those days are not far away again and hopefully we will be telling them where to shove them. Treat them like the irrelevance that they are.
Just ban them for good. Give them fuck all. I’m sick to the back teeth of this and so should every other supporter be.
Totally agree..If they are allowed to get away with this…we should extend the ban to NO TICKETS…end of…And extending this further…I trust our Board will demand a re-visit to the “joint sentence” that’s been handed down for the pitch ” invasion” at Ipox…No feckin’ way should we accept this nonsense…we need to take it the whole way…Over to you Celtic.
It’s been the same old shenanigans since they took the huff during the Dave King years, Terence. Let’s just be done with it once and for good. An absolute loony of a club with fans that should be nowhere near our stadium.
Whit he said…
Totally agree..If they are allowed to get away with this…we should extend the ban to NO TICKETS…end of…And extending this further…I trust our Board will demand a re-visit to the “joint sentence” that’s been handed down for the pitch ” invasion” at Ipox…No feckin’ way should we accept this nonsense…we need to take it the whole way…Over to you Celtic.
A wee thought experiment: we give them their full allocation even if they give us less, there by breaking the us them tit for tat duality which ensures reciprocal punishments.
We rise above their pitiful wee games and show how it should be done. We set an example that crushes the media narrative of they’re “both the same”.
By showing we are not the same they cannot treat us as such.
It would also highlight their pettiness and focus attention on why they behave as such.
The problem you have is that they’re a bunch of mentalists that don’t give a feck, Volp. It’s the same with the media. Unfortunately we’ll always be associated with William.
Sod that. We don’t want them here. Not through pettiness but through out and out bigotry. We don’t need them in any shape or deformity
cavanagh and co are being led by the nose up the garden path , the strategy is being dictated to these non football people by the huns in the back ground , the numb nuts , decisions like these to bring mcinnis wankland to the club were not thought up by the americans and as long as that is the way bleak house will be turned eventually into a wasteland or even worse a poundland perish the thought !!! Chortle
Home fans only at each ground we don’t need those scumbags wrecking our stadium.The best atmosphere recently was when we pumped the huns 3-0 not a single one of them in sight apart from in the press box.And at the upcoming League Cup tie Celtic should run out in our away kit,it’s just another away game.O** F*** my arse that died on 2012 along with the mankies.
Bryan – bizarrely I had never thought of the away kit point, but now you have raised it, it is weird. I complain when Celtic play in our away kit at (say) Aberdeen as obviously no clash, but had never picked up on that fact that we play in the hoops at Ibrox. Wearing our away kit to Ibrox would be a great way for us to tell them what we think of their position in the game.
If the cops and stewards could not protect the guys at the cup match, I wouldnt give tuppence for the safety of 300, even the spartans couldnt survive with a number like that. Frankly, you couldnt pay me to go into that outpost of hell.
We should take no tickets for this game and we give them no tickets. These games cost the taxpayer a fortune and also its hell for the good citizens of Glasgow. Many who dont go into town on those days.
There is a massive drop in unsavouriness with no away fans. It should be this way for the foreseeable future like the Boca / River game.
I’m surprised the police haven’t insisted on this!
Right at this moment our so called self appointed owner should be drawing up battle plans.
The mob from Ibrox are pissing all over us! Weve got a mountain of cash they’ve a mountain of debt, but you’d never know it.
They are telling us that we are lucky to get 300 tickets, they are holding us to ransom and our board are an absolute disgrace and quite frankly should be out the door. How do you remove the immovable, Desmond must be ok with how its going as he is keeping them in place.
Please get people in who think about the football more than the balance sheet. Get the football and team right, the finances will come rolling in
They still owe Celtic nearly 500k from the sc game and they will now retain the money due to Celtic for the league cup game. It means they will owe Celtic circa 1 million which they will retain and claim was the total owed for damage to their cesspit of a stadium. Time Celtic grew a pair and instruct both the spfl and Scot fa they will take all legal routes to ensure the monies due are paid in full.
I’d take the 300 tickets and return 290 at the last minute the day before the game, meaning the Huns and their bigot mates in the cops still have the same costs but they get nothing from us. For the league game at Celtic Park give the 300 and surround them by Celtic fans but demand payment up front as they can’t be trusted to pay us.