The latest Hatate story came from Frank McAvennie. He is not a “Celtic insider.”

Yesterday, Paulina wrote a really good piece about Reo Hatate and the manager’s comments that he is going to play a role in the Celtic games to come.

That does not surprise anybody who has watched Celtic over the last couple of years and knows that Hatate, on his game, can be one of our most effective players. There is no way a Celtic boss was going to overlook that in the run-in, especially not when he has already delivered for Martin O’Neill in a number of big games.

Martin clarified the situation with Hatate because a lot of people were making mischief on the fringes and talking about a falling out between the two of them. That appears to have no substance to it whatsoever. It is another game of Chinese whispers; the kind of nonsense you hear all the time at our club now.

That is partly the fault of the club itself, because in the absence of concrete information, rumours always fill the space. Celtic has become a place of rumours and stories, and that is not healthy.

There has been talk about Hatate being moody and not properly part of the team for years now, almost from the first few weeks after he arrived.

He doesn’t celebrate enough. He doesn’t join the other players in celebrations enough.

I mean, there is no requirement that he does any of that. As long as the guy gets on with the game and plays it to the best of his ability, I am not asking him to join the Celtic family at full throttle. Most players who come here don’t. I don’t know why we feel the need to single some of them out for it.

Because people carry this preconceived notion about Hatate as a result of nonsense like that, it becomes easy for them to believe almost every negative story about him. That he is disruptive or that managers don’t get on with him. That there is always something going on behind the scenes.

Who knows whether any of it is true?

I tend to dismiss all of it until there is concrete evidence, and Martin O’Neill has pretty much hand-waved the latest stuff away as too ridiculous to dwell on.

It was good reading Paulina’s piece because she approached it from the right angle. Hatate has been an effective contributor and an effective footballer for us. There is nothing to worry about in that respect.

If the manager decides that he is going to play a role in the last few games, then Hatate has already proved that he can do it.

As far as I’m concerned, Reo doesn’t have anything left to prove. But it would be good if he could go out, in what I see as the final months of his Celtic career, on a proper high.

He deserves that.

Where the stories became really funny for me, and almost surreal, was when I read breathless reports that a Celtic insider had dished the dirt on his relationship with Martin O’Neill.

I read that with weary resignation. I had already seen the original version of the story. So I knew exactly what the source was. I could not believe so many media outlets were running with it as if it was inside information.

It was the furthest thing from inside information.

The story was about Frank McAvennie giving his own personal thoughts on the relationship between O’Neill and Hatate. There was nothing to it. It was a complete non-issue.

McAvennie has always seemed to think that because he played for Celtic, he has some unique insight into what is going on inside the club. The truth is that he is about as far from knowing what is going on inside Celtic as the likes of Alan Hutton, Andy Halliday and all the other ex-players trying to climb onto the podcast bus.

These guys don’t really have insight into what is happening inside Celtic.

They may hear the odd story, but that is not the same thing. They don’t have context or backgroundhey don’t know all the facts.

The idea that McAvennie is inside Celtic with some special knowledge of the dressing room or the training ground is laughable. Martin O’Neill casually dismissed his insights a few weeks ago, so they are not sharing information. They are not telling each other secrets.

We all know it.

Had McAvennie actually claimed knowledge of the situation, that would be one thing. But to his credit, he did not do that. The reports and the headlines attempted to mislead people into believing he had. All he was doing was offering a personal opinion.

He made that clear.

So, for anyone to paint it as insight, or special knowledge, was nothing but a barefaced lie.

This stuff tires me out.

The other day, it was Ewan Cameron and Callum McGregor. Cameron was pretending that he knows something he does not actually know. Nobody at Celtic is telling Ewan Cameron anything. It is ridiculous for him to present himself as if he is privy to secret knowledge inside our club.

McAvennie was not doing that.

But he offered no real insight either.

What he said was that he feels like the manager doesn’t trust Hatate.

This is usually a pretty clever diagnosis when someone is not getting picked for the team.

It sounds more like someone stating the obvious than someone speaking with genuine knowledge of the relationship.

Our media is forever chasing headlines. It is forever chasing fluff. It is forever dressing up guesswork as revelation, opinion as information and pub talk as insight.

I just wish these people would stop embarrassing themselves by writing this rubbish.

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