Dundee United have taken action to prevent Celtic fans gaining entry to the home sections of Tannadice tomorrow night as Scottish football clubs – with the honourable exception of Livingston – preferring empty seats to paying customers. For Celtic’s recent Scottish Cup quarter final at Tannadice, Dundee United reduced the capacity for Celtic fans by taking the shed behind the goal at the Dens park side of their stadium back for use by home supporters, after consultations with their support.

Empty seats at Tannadice on Celtic’s last visit despite reducing the away capacity.

That didn’t exactly go to plan as the expected capacity home support in three stands failed to materialise and Celtic quite comfortably won the match. The real losers were the Celtic fans denied entry and the Dundee United board who were left with thousands of empty seats.

That was the view I had of the Celtic fans as we won the league in 2008

When Celtic won the league at Tannadice in 2008 I was in the away end behind the goal at the other end of the ground and as it turned out so were plenty of other Celtic fans. There was banter among the supporters of both teams and it was all good natured, the Dundee United fans certainly did not want that evening to conclude with Rangers winning the league.

If you look at footage of the post match celebrations that wonderful night, there are Celtic fans dotted all over the otherwise empty stands with the home fans at the game having left after the final whistle.

In 1981 I was in amongst that delirious lot and what a brilliant night

I was also at Tannadice in 1981 – had my English exam the next day , so studied on the supporters bus there and back memorising poetry that I still know to this day – and that too was a very special night. No ticket for tomorrow sadly and there’s no chance of enjoying the Tayside hospitality among the friendly Dundee United support, who will also secretly prefer Celtic winning the league as opposed to the extremely ugly alternative.

Here’s the statement from Dundee United as issued on their official website.

Dundee United have cancelled a number of tickets for Wednesday’s match with Celtic following a thorough investigation of all purchases for the Dundee United sections of Tannadice.

A refund has been offered on all cancelled tickets and barcodes on these tickets have been voided.

These tickets will not work on the turnstiles. Supporters attempting to use voided tickets will be denied entry.

Celtic’s allocation for this match is completely sold out and online sales for all areas of the stadium have been suspended.

For this match we will be conducting an outer security perimeter and supporters will not be permitted to enter the turnstile zone without producing a valid match ticket.

Anyone found to be in the wrong section of the ground will be ejected with arrangements in place to ensure the safety of all supporters.

These decisions have been taken in consultation with our ticketing staff, matchday operations team, Celtic and Police Scotland.

Highlights from those two previous title parties at Tannadice below…

As part of our Fathers Day promotion we launched a new offer last night offering a free Twice as Good t-shirt with every order of Matt Corr’s brilliant book Harry Hood – Twice as Good. When you order the book just drop in the size of t-shirt you want alongside you name eg Matt Corr (Medium) etc – choose from S, M, L, XL and XXL. Order below…