Celtic drawing Rangers in the next round of the Scottish Cup raised the age-old argument of the ticket allocation for next month’s clash.
As every Celtic supporter knows, Rangers cut the allocation when Odsonne Edouard smashed in that famous third goal at Ibrox when the 10-man Hoops beat them 3-2 back in 2018.
That goal sparked a chain of events that led Rangers to throw their toys out of the pram and reduce Celtic’s allocation to effectively zero over the course of the next few seasons.
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Now that Celtic have drawn Rangers in the Scottish Cup, the allocation argument raises its head again as the Bhoys are due a bigger share of the briefs as per the rules of the competition.
And Celtic boss Martin O’Neill has made his stance crystal clear and said his club should get every Scottish Cup ticket that Rangers are obliged to give his club.
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Martin O’Neill ‘wants all the tickets’ Celtic can get vs Rangers
Under the current rules, Rangers should give Celtic 10,000 tickets for the upcoming Scottish Cup clash which is 20% of Ibrox’s capacity.
And O’Neill says Celtic should get every single one of them.
O’Neill told Celtic TV, “I don’t know the club stance, but if you take me out of the club at this minute, just being a Celtic supporter, I would want all the tickets we can get, the allocation that’s available to us under the rules. I assume that would be forthcoming.
“I thought that the O-d F-rm fixture lost a little bit in the sense that the full allocation was not given, for whatever reason. I don’t know historically what it was. I’ve got kind of an idea but it doesn’t really matter.
“But I think that that did lose a little bit of one of the great fixtures in European football, if not the world.
“But at least there’s some fans coming back and it makes a bit of a difference.
“But to get the full allocation as we did…you know, going to Ibrox and having the side to the left full of Celtic fans was always gratifying.”
The Celtic goal that caused a Rangers ticket allocation meltdown
When Odsonne Edouard made that mazy run down the Rangers left flank to deftly curl a shot past Alan McGregor all those years ago, the Frenchman didn’t really know what he had actually done.
Celtic were regularly beating Rangers as the Parkhead club marched on to win a world-record Quadruple Treble, but it was the Frenchman’s goal that broke Ibrox.
From that day on, Rangers cut Celtic’s allocation under the guise that they wanted to give more of their own fans the chance to get a season ticket.
Indeed. Celtic fans know that Edouard’s goal broke the Ibrox club and their fans so much, that they were fed up watching the travelling Hoops support have part after party in Rangers’ own back yard.
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