Old Firm away fan ban 'inevitable', says O'Neill

[PA Media] Celtic manager Martin O'Neill feels the decision to ban away supporters from matches between Celtic and Rangers this season was "inevitable". The SPFL announced the decision after Celtic challenged the decision by their Glasgow rivals to give them just 300 tickets for the League Cup clash at Ibrox on 13 September. For last season's Scottish Cup quarter-final, also at Ibrox, Celtic were given the traditional allocation of 8000 tickets but following crowd trouble at that game, a reduced figure of 2500 was agreed. But in light of Celtic's decision to challenge the 300 ticket allocation, the league have decided to ban all away fans from the ground. "I think that was inevitable, really, when Rangers were offering 300 tickets, and we refused that," O'Neill said of the decision. "Really sad, I must admit, just from a normal punter's viewpoint. It's a great, great fixture when the ground is absolutely full. And I think the away fans make this. "I can think back of the years gone past, at the beginning of the century, when I was involved, and they were magnificent fixtures, absolutely fantastic. It is quite sad. "Hopefully the two clubs will maybe get together at some stage or another and try to iron out the particular problems. "It's not to say that we haven't had a few problems in the past, but they seem to have escalated over the last number of seasons, which is a problem."