Craig Levein has slammed the SPFL decision to stage the Hearts v Celtic Betfred Cup semi-final at 7.45pm on a Sunday night.
Hearts will be appearing in their first semi-final for five years but the Jambos boss fears that his fans won’t take up an allocation of 25,000 tickets.
Last night Anne Budge expressed her amazement at the decision announced by Neil Doncaster with her manager repeating those thoughts today.
“It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced in football,” the Hearts boss told The Sun.
“How you can come to this decision based around what should be one of the… there are four semi-finals in the season in the two big cup competitions so it’s a huge thing for Scottish football.
“So how they’ve come to this decision is beyond belief. It’s madness, honestly. There are so many things that could go wrong.
“The first thing is that we’ve not been to a semi-final for five years. We want to go and play at Hampden and we want our supporters to be there in numbers. That is my priority.
“I want 50 per cent of the tickets, I want to go to Hampden and make it feel like we have got a huge Hearts presence there.
“One thing’s for certain, we’re not getting that on a Sunday night at 7.45. We’re not getting that.
“I’ve got players talking to me about how disappointed their families are that they can’t come and watch their dad playing in a semi-final.
“That’ll go for our supporters and probably Aberdeen’s, who are the ones who suffer most because of the travel arrangements, and also by the very nature of when our game is.
“I just don’t understand how they can come to that decision and think it’s alright.
“It doesn’t compute with me. We need supporters to come to make it what it is, and we’re actually discouraging them from coming to the game. It’s absolute madness.
Aberdeen have described their 12 noon kick off against Sevco as an appalling decision despite Doncaster claiming that full discussions were held with the four competing clubs.
A number of MSP’s have expressed their concern with the latest farce from Hampden reflecting poorly on the Scottish game at a time when interest in the game has rarely been stronger with the club from Ibrox having to finance their team in the same manner as other competing clubs.
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