The firm Celtic stance on derby allocations as media report offers favourable Ibrox view

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The issue of away allocations for Celtic vs Rangers derby matches has raised its head once again.

On Wednesday evening, the Scottish Sun reported that the Ibrox side were about to make us a ticket offer for the first derby of next season.

Brendan Rodgers’ men are due in Govan on Sunday 3 September for match day four of the Premiership season.

The Sun report offers a pretty favourable Ibrox view on the whole ticket debate. It says Rangers are about to “extend an olive branch” and that they are “willing to welcome” Celtic supporters.

Intriguingly, the report also says that our rivals are “now in a position” to offer us 700 tickets for the match. That heavily contradicts the firm Celtic stance on the whole situation.

In March, after communication from the club, we reported the real story behind the Celtic and Rangers ticket furore.

At the time, it had just been announced that there would be no away supporters at either of the final two league derbies of the campaign.

Celtic made it clear that no Rangers fans had been “banned” from Celtic Park, or vice versa. We had simply rejected our allocation for Ibrox due to the supporter experience being poor, with our rivals following suit.

Celtic’s stance is that they want a return to the old days of 7,000 or 8,000 visiting supporters. They don’t feel moving forward with the 700 or 800 allocation is viable.

So, Rangers may well be looking to re-offer us a small allocation for Ibrox. But you can expect that to be rejected by Celtic, and rightly so.

The issue in the Sun report is almost a side one. Not too many Celtic supporters will care whether it’s 0 or 700 away fans at derbies.

The real issue at play is how we improve the spectacle of the derby with significantly more away fans, after Rangers took the huff in 2018.

The feeling among many seems to be that a higher number is what is required. The ball is, and always has been, in Rangers’ court.

In other news, Matt O’Riley has shared the message that Brendan Rodgers has been giving his Celtic players this week