Today The Hacks Are Pushing The Most Idiotic Celtic Transfer Story Of This Window.

What did I say earlier about our media? A joke, right?

You have to take your hat off to them at times. They go above and beyond when it comes to writing absolute guff. Today at least three outlets have gone for broke, with a story which started with The Daily Mail’s resident halfwit Stephen McGowan, who wrote an appalling piece on Liel Abada just the other week which we covered on here.

The gist of today’s nonsense is that Abada has “loan options” from England. It is, in some ways, a continuation of the piece I just mentioned, and goes over the same ground; Abada is under pressure to quit this club and three teams down south might offer him a solution, which is to leave on loan until the end of the season.

Read that again. Liel Abada could leave Celtic on loan.

I mean, what? Like we’re going to allow that to happen, this coming week? Even a permanent transfer would be an impossible sell to fans, and to the manager, but on loan? You have to keep repeating it to make sure you’re fully comprehending what you are being asked to believe here; Liel Abada. Going out on loan. It’s absurd.

There is as much chance of that happening as there is of The Mooch being unveiled as the next Celtic boss. Which is to say zero, nada, nil, zilch. And whilst I appreciate our hacks have jobs to do, I cannot believe that so many of them are content to copy and paste and run with this piece of clickbait junk, which is a complete non-story.

But that’s Scottish sports journalism for you, and it’s as I said this morning; can you even imagine what the state of debate and discussion would be in our game right now if it were not for fan media? The Evening Times, one of the papers running this stuff, has a story about Luis Palma being spotted on a Glasgow city bus.

That’s what we’re dealing with.

Christ almighty, are there any serious people left in this business north of the border?

These people do not have to write this kind of nonsensical fluff.

But it’s easy to do and they are fundamentally lazy.

Even if the basic premise of the story is accurate, it’s going nowhere and everyone involved has to know that it is going nowhere. Celtic would never permit such a deal. It would be madness. There is literally no way to justify it to the fans and Rodgers would rightfully lose his mind over it.

It’s also a fundamental insult to Abada himself because these stories portray him as some sort of weakling who will bend to appease people he should not be concerning himself about.

The stories about O’Riley were tiresome. These are now actually becoming offensive. As far as I’m concerned, the people responsible for them are now weaponizing our support for Palestine against us in an effort to unsettle one of our players, and it’s shameful and it’s inexcusable and McGowan should be persona non grata at Celtic Park for it.

Let me repeat what we all already know; there have been Palestinian flags at Celtic games for decades now. Abada signed for our club and played in front of them this whole time without any issues at all.

The 7 October attacks were loathsome and the vast, vast majority of the Celtic support recognises that and fully sympathises with Abada’s position. The club itself has bent over backwards to make him feel supported and valued. And he was excellent at the weekend, and got a rousing reception from the fans.

So, all of this, it’s just a pile of steaming bullshit. It’s a blatant attempt to cause trouble where there is none, and if our club wants to do something that will have the overwhelming support of the people in the stands they should ban McGowan and his rag from our press box and anyone else who thinks that this is a worthy story.