Brendan Rodgers: No away fans for derby game 'is a Rangers issue' after Celtic 'played their part'

Brendan Rodgers has laid the blame of having no away fans at the next Old Firm games at the door of Rangers and insisted “Celtic have played their part”.

The Hoops boss was asked about the recent decision not to have an away allocation for the next two derbies, despite an agreement being reached earlier this year for visiting supporters to return to the fixture.

And while he has sympathies with both sets of fans who will miss out on the occasion, he is adamant that is a Rangers issue.

Both clubs had agreed to allocate around 5% of their stadium capacity to away supporters for this season’s fixtures.

However, despite Celtic keeping to their part of the bargain they are not convinced that their city rivals can give the same guarantees for the game scheduled to be played at the home of Rangers at the New Year.

Rangers are currently playing their home games at Hampden as renovation works take place at Ibrox with no set date on when they will return to their own stadium.

That has been a cause of concern for Celtic who worked on their stadium in Parkhead during the summer to make sure it was ready to host away fans, but are no longer willing to offer tickets to Rangers for September 1 without the guarantee that their support will be able to attend the game in January.

Speaking to the media on Friday, Rodgers said: “It’s disappointing, for both sets of supporters, because it has been a long time now since we had a decent allocation for both clubs.

“It’s not complicated, I believe there was an agreement in place to carry out works to ensure that it’s in place for both sets of supporters to come.

“Celtic have been working on that for a number of months, I know that and I know that work that has gone into it and the investment to ensure that everything was right for this fixture.

“But, you can only do that if the agreement is upheld by both, so if we can’t guarantee that then sadly we aren’t able to open the gates for the away supporters for this one.

“I think the statement was for the next two games, so fingers crossed that after that we see in the final couple of games that we can get the supporters back in.

“I think the board have made a really good decision, in terms of that the club’s job is to protect the support and if there is not that guarantee for the second fixture, then I think it’s only logical that you wouldn’t reciprocate.

“Celtic have played their part in what they were asked to do, and again I go back, none of this was Celtic’s issue, nothing, when you go back to when this all started it was nothing to do with Celtic.

“Celtic have been dragged into this, as being a Celtic/Rangers thing, it’s not a Celtic/Rangers thing, this is a Rangers thing.

“Even when Celtic are asked to have this agreement to make the stadium safe and everything else, we plough money into that, we do the works that started months ago, and it hasn’t been done by both parties.

“So it’s not complicated, It hasn’t been done. From good faith, or whatever way you want to put it, there is still an agreement for both and it’s not been done.

“If we allow Rangers supporters in then we get to January and our own supporters can’t get in then that’s not good faith.

“So the agreement hasn’t been upheld, so Celtic, rightly, have to defend their supporters and the club and sadly the Rangers supporters will have to miss out on this game, and Celtic fans will miss out the return game.

“We hope that, after that, we can find a way to get the supporters in.”