Celtic fail to claim ‘PR win’ over Rangers ticketing war – Alison McConnell
Celtic failed to claim the “PR win” when it came to their ticketing war with Rangers, according to Herald journalist Alison McConnell.
Earlier this week, the Scottish Sun reported that Rangers fans will be “locked out” of Celtic Park for the next Old Firm game, which takes place on January 2.
In August, Steven Gerrard’s side beat the Hoops 1-0 in front of an Ibrox crowd made up of entirely home supporters.
McConnell believes Celtic should have simply bit the bullet and started to allow away fans to attend Old Firm games again due to the change in atmosphere at them.
“Celtic had the opportunity to take the moral high ground here, to come out and say, ‘enough’s enough, let’s go back to some kind of normality, to some kind of division of tickets that allows supporters to come into the ground’,” said McConnell, as shown in a clip on the PLZ Soccer Twitter account on Tuesday.
“If that’s perceived as, ‘you blinked first,’ then so be it. You can turn your back and take the moral high ground and the PR win that comes with it.
“I think it’s boring, to be honest with you. I think it’s a boring argument.
“If you’ve got anything sensible about you and you’ve been to the games when you’ve had a quarter of fans in from one side and you’ve been when it’s been one-dimensional, you know it’s a different occasions entirely.”
Ridiculous
This isn’t football.
We don’t go to matches expecting it to be 100 per cent support for one team. You’ve simply got to have the away fans.
We’ve had the better of Celtic for the last 12 months but can anyone really say the atmosphere at Old Firm matches has been made any better by this stupid behind-the-scenes war over tickets?
Both teams have reduced away allocations over the last few years and now the COVID pandemic has led to zero visiting fans being allowed into stadiums.
According to the Scottish Sun, Celtic would be open to what are basically peace talks to end this madness after the next Old Firm on January 2.
However, if they wanted to nip this in the bud now, how come they have snubbed the chance to hand Rangers an away allocation in the winter?
It makes no sense to us.
They can have their PR win if they want. So what?
We don’t care who blinks first, for the sake of the spirit of the game, both teams need to start letting a good portion of away fans return to these matches.
It makes Scottish football look like a circus.
In other Rangers news, an official media partner of the club has blasted the Daily Record over their “utter pish” Gers headline.