Old Firm standoff is over as away tickets return to Ibrox and Parkhead | OneFootball

Rangers and Celtic have finally ended the clubs’ long-running feud over tickets, and have agreed on the UEFA model of a 5% away allocation from next season onwards.

While it won’t affect the remaining two matches of this season, the agreement finally secures an end to a ridiculously long issue, started all those years ago by Dave King when he decided to kill Celtic’s allocation in 2018 down to just 800 briefs, before they followed suit and we ended up on the slippery slope to zero.

With this news Celtic will host 3,000 Rangers fans at Parkhead next season, while Rangers will accommodate 2,500 Celtic fans in Govan for all the Old Firm matches, which is all Ibrox Noise ever suggested we do.

The lack of away fans in this fixture for the best part of 18 months+ has been a real wart in what is Scottish football’s showpiece match.

Few matches in world football on any level attract the attention the Old Firm does, and the stand-off was affecting the marketability of the Scottish game, and the quality of player the club could attract.

What’s the point of going to Rangers (or Celtic) for the Old Firm match when there’s only one set of fans there?

Thankfully this has been sorted at long, long last, and Rangers confirmed it in a statement:

It’s a bit of a contrast to media reports claiming Rangers had no interest in dialogue about this – they always did.

Rangers’ board always knew the value of the Old Firm fixture, previous board incumbents played to the galleries of certain fans by trying to downplay the importance of away supporters.

But the Bennett and Bisgrove board knew it was imperative to get this resolved, and it has finally been sorted.

Of course, it’s by no means all Rangers, Celtic’s nonsense of rejecting Rangers tickets for Ibrox was every inch part of the problem too, based on ‘safety’ grounds (you know, the same fans who smashed up Motherwell recently) but hey ho.

It’s now fixed and from next season the bigotry and cesspool of vile hate of this fixture will finally be back in Govan and Parkhead where it belongs.

Aren’t we glad!