Neil Cameron: Efe Ambrose has achieved more than most of us and so booing him is out of order

For the first few years things went pretty well but then he started to make a few mistakes and this caused people to get on his back, and now so shot is his confidence that when he walks into his own office these days he expects to mess up.

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The thing is, this lad is one of the good ones. He works hard, doesn’t cheat anyone but can’t do one thing right without making three blunders. Bless him, as Brendan Rodgers might say and actually did when asked on Saturday night about one Efetobore "Efe" Ambrose Emuobo.

The person I described is fictitious. Ambrose is not. His journey is the reverse to the one mapped out above. These days he must wonder why he bothered to leave his home town of Kaduna to make it as a professional footballer in Europe.

And yet sympathy seems in short supply for the Celtic player. Unlike the made-up Scot who without doubt would be viewed kindly as a luckless victim, someone who had the guts to go out in the world only for the world to kick him in the special area.

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Footballers such as Ambrose don’t get a huge amount of people feeling sorry for them. This is understandable. They get paid too much for doing a job so many of us would love to do. The lifestyle is one which doesn’t exactly mirror austerity Britain and as for sex, well let’s just say there are not too many who die wondering. Few ever go home along after a night out.

But it is hard not to feel for Efe. An honest guy whose confidence has been ripped apart by his own failings. His own goal against Barcelona – and you could argue it wasn’t entirely his fault – summed him up.

A bad decision and bad luck. He can’t seem to avoid either. It’s been this way for some time now and for the man’s sake he should be taken out of the firing line.

I wasn’t in Dublin but have been told a few boos rang out when he next touched the ball and his eventual substitution was cheered. For me, that’s not the Celtic support who down the ages have never been ones to slag off their own.

Those who did boo Ambrose need a right good look at themselves. Nobody is claiming he should be in the team, but he doesn’t pick himself. My guess is that he would rather be left out.

It should always be noted that he isn’t a natural centre-half. He started out in midfield and plays right-back for his country. Ambrose has also had some good times at Celtic. He was in the team which beat Barcelona and for a while looked a really decent player.

It started to go wrong for Ambrose when Neil Lennon made the call to play him in a Champions League last 16 home match against Juventus only hours after he had returned to Glasgow following winning the African Cup of Nations.

Lennon got it wrong and within minutes Ambrose, as he has become prone to do, allowed a ball to go over his head, Alessandro Matri ran through on goal and scored. The tie was effectively over.

Kris Commons publicly criticised his team-mate after the game, something which rarely happens, and that does reveal what kind of guy Ambrose is. He is quiet, modest and self-effacing. Would any Celtic player have the guts to call out Scott Brown, and they’ve had lot of opportunities to do so?

They wouldn’t be brave enough. But big Efe is just going to sit there and take it from a guy he sits beside in the dressing room and now a section of his own supporters.

Ambrose isn’t good enough to play for Celtic. At least not any more. But he could do with some understanding.

In his book Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby writes about Gus Caesar who Arsenal fans blamed for losing the 1988 League Cup Final to Luton Town. Hornby makes the point that the bold Gus would have best player in his school, boys’ team, the county and then Arsenal’s academy to make it to a Wembley final.

Caesar, who had a spell at Airdrie, wasn’t a bad footballer. He had worked too hard and overcome too many hurdles for anyone to utterly dismiss him and he didn’t, as Ambrose has to do, move to a different continent to make it.

Efe has achieved a lot more than any of us ever will and taken risks most others wouldn’t dare to and, by all accounts, is good bloke. He isn’t a great player, concentration is what other people do, but booing the guy is hardly going to help.

What would help is if Celtic allow Ambrose to leave for good of his own sanity of nothing else. Bless him.

And another thing…

RANGERS supporters must have been left confused last week when bans were handed out to those identified as having run onto the pitch at the Scottish Cup Final

The club’s head of safety and security David Martin wrote to those detained after the defeat to Hibernian and within the letter said: “Your arrest is a breach of regulations and has brought the reputation of this club into disrepute. Rangers FC has made it abundantly clear it will not tolerate any form of unacceptable behaviour.”

This is in stark contrast to a statement, the second put out by Rangers over that weekend, which seemed to absolve the pitch intruders from serious blame.

It said: "We acknowledge that a tiny minority of Rangers fans also encroached on the pitch but only after having been faced with prolonged and severe provocation and in order to protect our players and officials who were being visibly attacked in front of them. Any club’s supporters would have done the same.”

From doing to what anyone else would have done to not being allowed to follow their team any more. That’s some change of tone.