Motherwell chief executive Alan Burrows has taken to Twitter to explain why Celtic fans weren’t given extra tickets despite swathes of home seats sitting empty yesterday.
The Hoops support was again slashed due to the fact Celtic had to emerge from the away stand to access the pitch from their changing room. This meant that only 3900 away supporters were able to attend both fixtures against the Steelmen [Celtic].
However, despite fans looking for extra briefs in the run-up to the fixture, Motherwell missed out on extra cash with a host of their own seats sitting unfilled. Even so, Burrows has backed his club’s refusal to give Celtic extra tickets as he explained their reasons on Twitter today:
The atmosphere at Fir Park yesterday was pretty much conjured up by the Celtic support who roared their team onto victory. The lack of backing from Motherwell supporters was disappointing to say the least.
It’s unfathomable that season-ticket holders would choose to miss a fixture of this magnitude. Especially when you consider the glory they must feel when knocking off Celtic or Rangers.
But Burrows does indeed deserve some credit in explaining this to the Celtic fan who queried.
Difficult to advertise Scottish football with stands sitting next to empty
You can understand Burrows’ logic here. He doesn’t want Fir Park to be the land of the away support. Giving Celtic more tickets would’ve created an atmosphere perhaps extremely uncomfortable for the home fanbase.
There would’ve undoubtedly been a short-term cash injection for the North Lanarkshire side. One that certainly would’ve been welcomed too. But they’re clearly trying to back their supporters and ensure that season-ticket holders aren’t moved for the purpose of a greater away section.
It’s easy to hold your hands up and say fair play to all of this. But the problem is that it’s a bad look for Scottish football. These matches are televised live on Sky Sports and other channels around the globe. It doesn’t make the game more appealing to have such large sections of empty supporters.
Burrows says that games against Celtic and Rangers are the lowest in terms of attendance from his own club’s supporters. That really shouldn’t be the case, and there needs to be some head-crunching to figure out why that is.
If Fir Park was packed to the rafters yesterday with a brilliant atmosphere being created by the home support then fair enough. That’s something you could accept. But if not for the Celtic support you could’ve been forgiven for thinking we were still in 2020 and playing in empty stadiums.
It is what it is for now, and Celtic won the game in convincing fashion. But it’s not great to see Scottish football fans locked out of a stadium just because other fans can’t be bothered attending.
In other news, Scott Brown set for return vs Celtic after being dropped by Aberdeen boss
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