Ally McCoist has become the latest pundit to attempt to rope Celtic into Rangers’ petty decision on Glasgow derby tickets.
Rangers initially slashed Celtic’s Ibrox allocation back in the summer of 2018 after constantly being turned over by the Hoops. Celtic then responded in kind. However, at the time, the Hoops stated that they would be open to discussions between the clubs and the SPFL in order to get the fixture back to normality [Glasgow Times].
Yet despite Celtic consistently being ready to change things back, Rangers have constantly dismissed the idea. Only 2 months ago, Ibrox managing director Stewart Robertson told Sky Sports that things wouldn’t be changing for the foreseeable future.
But this difference of opinion between the 2 clubs continuously gets ignored by the media. And funnily enough, it tends to be from Ibrox supporting pundits. Barry Ferguson, for example, refused to highlight that it was Rangers’ issue when he urged a return to normal back in the summer [Go Radio Football Show].
And McCoist has followed his lead in that respect. Speaking on BT Sports’ Scottish Football Extra show, he said: “How good was the atmosphere on Sunday, with two sets of fans in that place [Hampden Park].
“These two clubs, get your heads together and get rid of the nonsense. Away fans must be allowed to travel to each other’s grounds in numbers. The atmosphere on Sunday was magic.”
Ally McCoist the latest to ignore Celtic olive branch
It’s difficult to understand why on earth we keep getting dragged into this utter nonsense. Rangers’ failure to accept Celtic’s olive branch is on them and absolutely nobody else.
Celtic literally can’t do anything else. There seems to be this idea that we should be letting thousands of Rangers supporters back into Parkhead without a guarantee of the same at Ibrox. Our rivals have made their stance on this issue clear, and therefore Celtic can only defend our own supporters in all of this.
Nevermind this being the bigger club nonsense. That’s not how this works. You can argue Celtic have already shown to be the bigger club anyway given we didn’t instigate this and have already tried to resolve things.
It’s clear that Celtic would go back to the normal arrangement in a heartbeat. It’s our rivals who continuously carry out interviews with their club chiefs stating that there’s no going back. So why on earth we keep getting dragged into things as if it’s our fault is anyone’s guess.
In the meantime, so long as it all stays the same, Celtic have to protect their season-ticket holders. Why should more of our own fans miss out if Rangers aren’t being responsive to a permanent solution on away supporters?
McCoist is just the latest to show some ignorance when it comes to this particular matter. Hopefully, this isn’t a debate we need to keep having in the long-term.
In other news, The class moment that highlighted just how much Celtic win meant to every single player
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