Celtic Must Not Allow Liel Abada’s “Allies” To Smear This Club And Our Fans.

The Daily Record and other outlets are carrying a story tonight claiming that “allies” of Liel Abada have attacked this club and accused fans of treating the player “disgustingly”.

Avi Luzon is the guy they’ve named, and this mouthy git has been at the forefront of efforts to get Abada to leave Celtic for a long time. In March last year he embarrassed himself with a claim that Abada wanted to leave and was set to be sold … he wasn’t sold and signed a new deal.

Whatever has been going on outside of Celtic Park, the idea that the fans, inside the stadium at least, have treated Abada badly is demonstrably false.

If he’s getting stick in the street then that’s shameful, but to tar the whole support and the whole club with that brush because of a few random nutters, who might not even be Celtic fans, is deplorable.

I know we make this demand at lot, or we seem to make this demand a lot, but Celtic can’t allow us to be slandered in that fashion. This guy claims to be a close personal friend of Abada – he’s the president of Maccabi Petah Tikva, his former club – but he had no idea what was going on here before when he said Abada was unhappy and he has no idea now.

This guy just likes to talk. And he likes to attack our club.

We should not be allowing that to happen, because it paints a dreadful picture of us and it isn’t outside the realms of possibility that we might at some point want to sign another Israeli player … we cannot afford to have this club or this support slandered in this fashion.

This isn’t something we can just ignore.

When we were accused of being an antisemite club late last year the bloggers contacted Celtic for comment and Celtic issued a statement through them; a lot of people didn’t believe that was an appropriate response, and I have come to agree with them.

That ought to have been made through official channels and in a much more aggressive denial.

This club has a responsibility to protect our fans from this kind of rubbish, and I would hope they would take it. When Abada is sold this club needs to accompany that deal with a clear statement which sets a few people right. This guy is one of them.