Rangers media partners Follow, Follow and Heart & Hand have bitten back at pro-Celtic claims that the removal of the away Old Firm ticket allocation is down to the Ibrox club.
Pro-Celtic voices have been out in the media stirring up their usual nonsense ever since the decision was taken, which will see no fans at either Celtic Park or Ibrox in the final two league games of the season.
Rangers – who infamously cut Celtic’s 8000 allocation in 2018 to 800 – are clear they will not budge on the situation with disgruntled Parkhead supporters desperate for a return to the previous arrangement.
The situation has caused some friction between both clubs and both sets of supporters but Rangers have been clear to their media partners that the latest decision comes due to concerns raised by Celtic.
As per an article posted on Follow, Follow, the fanzine’s editor Mark Dingwall claims “it’s Celtic who are to blame for lack of Old Firm away fans”.
Celtic concerns at heart of Old Firm ticket allocation issues
The story attacks the Parkhead club’s “pets in the media” and claims the situation is actually down to security concerns due to Celtic’s lack of control over their own Ultras.
This is a claim which was reiterated by Ibrox media partners Heart & Hand, via David Edgar, who bit back at suggestion it’s big bad Rangers at the centre of things.
“This is of course due to the fact that safety concerns were raised by Celtic to do with their own fans more than anything else,” said David Edgar, on the platform’s Daily Update for 05/04/23.
“There has been a sort of manipulation in the media and I saw Mark Dingwall wrote an article in which he pointed out that in the mainstream media we’ve seen a lot of pro-Celtic figures suggesting that it’s somehow Rangers’ fault.
“This isn’t the case whatsoever. A large part of it is over the years Celtic have allowed their Ultras group to get away with so much that they’re basically uncontrollable and the police just don’t want to deal with it.
“I see a lot of people saying ‘let’s go back to the old allocation’; it’s not going back in the foreseeable future, you can guarantee Rangers are not changing their minds on this.
“They want to sell the season tickets to our supporters so the idea of Celtic getting the full Broomloan is a non-starter.
“There were also voices at Ibrox who didn’t quite understand why they got the full behind the goal whilst we got shunted off into the corner rather than equivalent.
“I don’t see it changing. There’s been some talk of European allocations, that’s unlikely to happen either. Moving forward, it’ll be 800, or none.”
Rangers stand firm against Parkhead politicking
It’s clear Rangers will not return to the previous allocation and the hypocrisy around Celtic Park when it comes to this stinks.
Not only is this fixture a non-event for their club apparently, against a team who no longer exist, but they want to return to the “old allocation” when Rangers are a “new club”.
Then there is the suggestion that it’s damaging the fixture – again the same fixture which holds no importance – when they are doing exactly that by preventing away fans into their stadium.
The reality is they are unhappy they are not getting it all their own way with the Old Firm ticket allocation at Rangers – who fundamentally will not budge – and are now playing politics with their fans, Police Scotland and media in an attempt to reverse the situation.
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