Hearts fans set to leave Robbie Neilson embarrassed after his Celtic ticket comments

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Hearts supporters look set to leave Robbie Neilson red-faced after his latest comments on slashing Celtic’s ticket allocation.

The Jambos have cut Celtic’s Roseburn Stand allocation in half. Meaning that the Hoops will only take around 1,300 supporters to Tynecastle for tomorrow night’s vital Premiership encounter.

The idea is that Hearts give their fans top priority as they believe they can sell the game out. However, with around only 36 hours until kick-off, there remains hundreds of seats available in the Roseburn Stand. Only a handful of seats appear to have been snapped up.

And it comes as Neilson bigged up Hearts’ ability to sell out their stadium for games of this magnitude. Speaking via the Scottish Sun, Neilson said: “If we can sell out the rest of the stadium to Hearts fans then we do it.

“It’s something I’d like the club to continue to do. If you can sell out the rest of the allocation then 100 percent. Other teams don’t have the capability to do that, so they have to give a bigger support to the away team.

“But if we can get 19,000 Hearts fans there I would take that all day.”

Robbie Neilson comments could look rather foolish come tomorrow night

I totally understand the urge to try and prioritise your own supporters. If Hearts believe they can sell out Tynecastle then fair enough. But it looks as though they’re going to be left looking extremely red-faced here.

In fact, Neilson really should’ve been more aware regarding just how many tickets had been sold before coming out with the above comments. It’s clear they won’t be selling out their allocation.

Yes, there may be a flurry of tickets snapped up on the night of the game as supporters look to make last-minute buys. But Hearts are continuing to desperately try and flog them. This clearly isn’t the strong reaction they had hoped for.

Hearts also made the move to lock out Celtic supporters on opening-day too as they only offered tickets to home supporters. Celtic returned the favour by giving the Tynecastle club no tickets for their League Cup clash back in September.

Scottish football has been rife with ongoing ticket disputes, and it’s certainly growing tiresome. Hearts clearly believe they’re onto a winner by slashing Celtic and Rangers’ Tynecastle allocations, but the reality is they’re struggling to now sell those seats.

It’ll hit Hearts in the pocket more than anything else. But perhaps they feel it’s a small price to pay to get a petty one over on the Hoops.

In other news, Celtic loanee Conor Hazard looks set for big chance as Helsinki sell first-choice goalkeeper