Two weeks on Sunday Celtic travel to Ibrox with no word on whether there will be any away fans at the fixture.
It has almost become the norm that the Derby fixture is played in front of home fans only, not since Kyogo Furuhashi equalised at Ibrox on 2 January 2023 has there been a corner of joy in among the silent despair of an away goal in the fixture.
There is absolutely nothing coming out of either club about away fan tickets for the match, there is bound to be a level of discussion over the fixture but nothing has yet leaked out on the question of away tickets.
Last week 2,000 Benfica fans were celebrating inside Ibrox but it seems that some of them were using seats that Season Tickets have been sold for SPFL fixtures.
Celtic haven’t gone on the record over their decision not to take tickets for their last two matches at Ibrox, through their media messengers it seems that the security concerns forced the decision.
Unlike the corner given to away fans at Celtic Park the section for visiting fans at Ibrox has home supporters on all sides and also above within missile throwing range from the upper sections of the Broomloan Road and Govan Stands.
It seems from the discussion above that Sevco Supporters Clubs have yet to be given an allocation of tickets for the match, with segregation taken into account not having 700 Celtic fans at the match can fee up around 1,100 tickets.
Most of them will be lined up for hospitality customers who can have a pie and sausage roll buffet in Edmiston House before the match then given tickets to join in the chants of hate.
There has been claims that the SPFL could have a vote on minimum away ticket allocations but with Neil Doncaster involved it is hard to see anything meaningful being put in place.
As it stands clubs are obliged to offer ‘a reasonable number’ of tickets to away supporters.
With that rule in place Celtic have gone from having over 3,000 tickets for the Wheatfield Stand at Tynecastle to just 576. In contrast the SFA has a rule that 20% of tickets are given to the away club for Scottish Cup ties.
There is nothing in the SPFL rules about the safety of away supporters, 700 clearly isn’t a workable number which leaves the current options as either zero or 2,000, referred to as the European allocation.
Whatever the decision is for the April 7 match at Ibrox will be replicated at Celtic Park in the post split fixture.
As things stand Celtic will be at home to Sevco, Hearts and either Hibs or Dundee after the break with away fixtures at Kilmarnock and St Mirren.
Up until the 2017/18 season away supporters were given 7,000 tickets at each ground but after a fourth successive Celtic win at Ibrox Dave King decided to cut the allocation down to 700 and the current stand off was set in play.
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