Since the title race swung Celtic’s way after Rangers drew at Motherwell on Saturday, phone lines at United have been jammed by fans trying to book their seats for the match.

A big chunk of those calls have come from Hoops supporters trying to get their hands on home end tickets, but United have been taking steps to make sure that does not happen.

Today, only fans whose names are on the club’s database were being allowed to make purchases and, as is the norm, anyone found to be in the wrong end on Thursday would be ejected.

“We do not have any away tickets and I would expect the few we have left for the home end will be gone quickly,” said a club spokesman.

While the Tangerines do not want to see Celtic, or anyone else, winning the league on their patch, the thrilling climax to the title race has thrown them a nice windfall.

The capacity crowd, plus television revenue from the game being shown live by satellite broadcasters Setanta, will see a nice six-figure end-of-season bonus coming their way.

Thursday will also be a night of farewells, though, with the game being switched from Sunday, it’s now unlikely Christian Kalvenes will be able to return from Norway to take a final bow on the pitch.

Midfielders Willo Flood and Mark Kerr are likely to be playing their last games, with Flood returning to FA Cup finalists Cardiff City at the end of his year-long loan and Kerr also set to move south this summer under freedom of contract.

He is still interesting Preston North End and Nottingham Forest, among others.

Definitely out of the final game is broken foot victim Craig Conway, while boss Craig Levein is unlikely to use skipper Lee Wilkie, who is just a booking away from suspension.

Wilkie was involved in a training ground bust-up with team-mate Mihael Kovacevic at the weekend, but that will have nothing to do with his being left out.

“I’ll probably have Lee on the bench as cover — that’s what I did with Barry Robson last year,” said Craig.

“What happened at training is not an issue. It’s the kind of thing that happens about once a week — if fact on Friday it was Jim O’Brien and Morgaro Gomis at it.

“What it shows is the players are definitely up for this game and, knowing them quite well now, I can sense there has been an edge to their work over the last few days.”

The manager was in Glasgow today as the Scottish football community turned out en-masse for Tommy Burns’ funeral.