Martin O’Neill is right about the Ibrox allocation. Celtic must act.

At some stage over the course of the next 24 hours, I think most Celtic supporters expect the club to make a statement on the Ibrox League Cup ticket situation.

There needs to be one, and it needs to be robust.

This board does not get many things right, but on the Ibrox ticket stand-off its position has been correct from the start.

Very specifically, Celtic has treated them as they have treated us, and when the club has felt that legitimate safety concerns were not being taken seriously, it has been prepared to escalate the matter rather than simply accept whatever was imposed.

That is how it should be.

Celtic’s response at every stage of this has been reasonable and proportionate, despite a media atmosphere which has repeatedly tried to suggest that somehow we should be the ones to nobly surrender our position for the greater good.

We have heard all the usual nonsense about taking the high ground, being the bigger club and refusing to retaliate.

The club is not obliged to volunteer to be treated badly in order to satisfy some mythical moral standard invented by people who were never going to give us credit for meeting it anyway.

The original decision to refuse Ibrox an allocation at Celtic Park came after a long period in which this fixture had become increasingly dysfunctional and safety concerns had become central to the whole argument.

The stand-off eventually forced the SPFL into the middle of the dispute, and in 2024 the league confirmed an agreement under which the clubs would eventually return to roughly five per cent allocations for league matches, subject to the necessary requirements being satisfied at both grounds.

That agreement mattered because it established a basic principle: reciprocity. Treat each other the way you are treated.

If Ibrox now believes it can simply throw the agreement aside whenever it wishes, Celtic should respond in reciprocal fashion.

The Ibrox club has offered Celtic just 300 tickets for the upcoming League Cup quarter-final, and Martin O’Neill made absolutely clear at the weekend what he thinks about it. He said that if Celtic is going to receive only 300 tickets, we might as well receive none at all, and even suggested that Celtic could give them one ticket in return.

I do not think that was some frivolous line thrown out for a laugh. I think it reflected genuine frustration with what this whole farce is becoming.

And I also think he is right.

If Celtic concludes that taking 300 tickets creates a safety problem which is simply not worth accepting, then refusing the allocation would be entirely reasonable. But if we do that, there has to be a reciprocal response. The Ibrox club cannot continue making unilateral decisions and expecting Celtic to absorb the consequences.

At some point, somebody has to force the issue.

If the SPFL is content to allow the Ibrox club to make this decision for a League Cup tie, then Celtic should put the league and the other club straight back on the spot by making it clear that, as far as we are concerned, the previous spirit of reciprocal allocations has been destroyed. You cannot have reciprocity in one direction.

You cannot demand Celtic provides a meaningful allocation at Celtic Park while Ibrox decides that 300 is sufficient at the other end.

That is not an agreement. That is capitulation.

There is another aspect to this which I think matters even more than the atmosphere, and that is safety. The Ibrox club says it has reduced the allocation because it wants greater ticket-holder accountability, stronger ingress controls and enhanced segregation. Celtic is still considering its response.

Fine. Then let us talk about segregation. Because 300 Celtic supporters inside Ibrox presents an obvious question: how exactly are they going to be protected?

The previous large away allocation required a substantial policing and segregation operation. Even the more recent arrangements involved thousands of visiting supporters, with clearly defined sections and infrastructure around them.

Now we are talking about 300. Three hundred supporters who could find themselves surrounded by tens of thousands of hostile home fans on a day when emotions will already be running high. That is not some trivial logistical detail.

That is the central issue. If the safety arrangements are good enough, demonstrate it. If they are not, Celtic should not expose its supporters to unnecessary risk simply to say that we accepted an allocation.

Martin O’Neill’s instinct that we may be better taking none at all is therefore not difficult to understand.

There is also precedent for Celtic taking a hard line when the club believes safety requirements are not being met.

In April this year, the SPFL itself stated that Celtic, as the home club, had imposed an additional condition on the distribution of away tickets which it considered necessary and proportionate for managing safety and security. The league also explicitly noted that a reciprocal five per cent agreement existed between the clubs.

So, this is not some new principle that Celtic is inventing because we are angry. Safety has been part of this argument for years and if safety is genuinely the Ibrox club’s justification now, then Celtic is perfectly entitled to assess whether accepting such a tiny allocation creates a greater risk than refusing it altogether.

The atmosphere is secondary to that. We can live without 300 Celtic supporters being placed in a corner of Ibrox purely so everybody can pretend that away fans are still present. We cannot live with those supporters being put into a situation Celtic believes is unnecessarily dangerous. That is the line.

The wider problem here is the pandering. If the Ibrox club is willing to reduce Celtic’s allocation to 300 because that is what sections of its support want to hear, then the situation becomes increasingly difficult to manage rationally.

There has been far too much pandering to the lowest common denominator around this fixture for years. Every concession becomes the new baseline. Every retreat becomes permanent. Every time their side decides to change the arrangement, Celtic is somehow expected to absorb it and prove its maturity by doing nothing. Enough.

This club should not be frightened of escalation when escalation is the only language which produces movement. That is precisely what happened before. When the away allocation became unacceptable, Celtic responded. When safety concerns were not adequately addressed, Celtic responded.

Eventually the SPFL had to become involved and a framework was produced. The only reason that happened was because Celtic refused to keep swallowing whatever was put in front of it. That lesson should not now be forgotten.

One luxury Celtic has here is that we really do not need to worry about how sections of the media react. We already know how they will react.

If Celtic accepts the 300 tickets, some will say we have been weak. If Celtic refuses them, some will say we are escalating the dispute. If Celtic cuts Ibrox’s future allocation in response, we will be accused of retaliation. If Celtic does nothing, the same people will tell us we lack leadership.

Once you understand that you are unlikely to receive a fair hearing whatever you do, the fear of not receiving one disappears. There is freedom in that. Use it. Celtic should make the decision which best protects Celtic supporters and best protects the club’s position in this dispute. Nothing else should matter. Not newspaper editorials. Not lectures about being the bigger club. Not people demanding that Celtic sacrifices its own interests in order to demonstrate maturity.

This has gone on far too long for that kind of nonsense.

The Ibrox club made its decision. Now Celtic should make ours. If 300 tickets is deemed unsafe, reject them. If Ibrox has torn up the spirit of reciprocity, make it clear that reciprocity works both ways.

If the authorities want meaningful away allocations at these fixtures, force them to engage with the consequences of allowing one club to reduce them to a token number. Do not simply shrug and accept it.

Martin O’Neill is the manager of Celtic Football Club. He is not some random supporter ranting on social media. When he says publicly that Celtic might as well take no tickets and suggests that the other side should receive one in return, that tells you how ridiculous this situation has become. I happen to agree with him.

So today Celtic can do us all a favour. Announce a couple of signings. Then announce what you intend to do about this. Because this one is important.

It is not going to reach a satisfactory conclusion by waiting for the Ibrox club suddenly to become reasonable. It is not going to be fixed by Celtic forever being expected to absorb the latest provocation. Sometimes you have to create the conclusion yourself.

And if the Ibrox club wants 300 Celtic supporters inside its ground, it should be made absolutely clear what the consequence of that decision will be.

Three hundred works both ways. So does none.

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