Tierney left saddened by ‘Judas’ taunts
Tierney says flak, threats and graffiti by fans broke his heart as he opens up on hardest time of his life so far
KIERAN TIERNEY last night revealed ‘Judas’ was spraypainted near his flat while he was also threatened and branded ‘a rat’ over his £25million move from Celtic to Arsenal last summer.
The Scotland international defender faced a vicious online backlash from supporters of the Parkhead club when he quit his boyhood heroes — and has not been back to Celtic Park since.
The move caused uproar with fans upset that Celtic diehard Tierney could leave the club while it was on the quest for an historic ten-in-a-row.
While Tierney was left heartbroken by the abuse he received on Twitter, it got worse when graffiti appeared near his home in Motherwell.
‘It was just sad the way it ended, people turning and all that,’ Tierney told Open Goal’s Keeping
the Ball on the Ground podcast. ‘Weeks before when Arsenal had bid, people were like: “You’re a rat if you go there, you’re terrible, you’re never a Celtic fan”.
‘I’m like: “This is breaking my heart reading this and as soon as this gets announced, it’s going to blow up”.
‘The worst thing I did when it got announced was go on Twitter. It was a nightmare. There were thousands of messages, threats and all sorts.
‘I was on the flight, near enough greeting to my agent like: “What’s happening here? I’m getting it stinking. This is going to be my family’s life forever, me known as what these people are making me out to be”.
‘They (the critics) don’t know half of it, they just assume everything, and they don’t know it all.
‘When I went home two days later after signing, there was spray paint on the walls — “Judas” — outside my bit.’
Asked if he had been back to Celtic Park, Tierney replied: ‘No,
I’m scared.’ If those fraught circumstances made the move a strain, it was then compounded when Tierney struggled badly with injuries at Arsenal. Combined with homesickness and doubts over his future when the London giants sacked Unai Emery and brought in Mikel Arteta, it became the hardest time of the 23-year-old’s young life. But when he rounded off the season by winning the FA Cup in August, the emotion poured out as he spoke via FaceTime to the family up in Scotland who had kept him strong. ‘It’s been a hard year for me, in every way possible,’ he told Radio Clyde in another interview last night. ‘There were operations, there were doubts, there was a change of manager and there was homesickness.
‘It was probably the lowest time of my life, to be honest.
‘To be away from home and have injuries, not playing and the manager switching and you’re wondering if you’ll get a chance...
‘But I’ve got my family and friends to get me through times like that. I can’t thank them enough.
‘All I could do is work hard and hope for the best — and it changed when Mikel Arteta took over. To come back and win the FA Cup was special.
‘I FaceTimed my mum and dad after the FA Cup final and we were all crying together because we know what we have been through and we have been through it together. All the doubts and people writing us off.’
Tierney is loving working under Arteta, who played for Rangers from 2002-2004 and completed the clean sweet of domestic honours in his first season, just as Tierney did in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The pair occasionally bond over their respective Old Firm experiences.
‘We talk about it now and then,’ he said. ‘We have spoken about the trebles we have won!
‘It’s actually good for me because he understands the Scottish game. Even better, he understands the Scottish accent better than most!’
Tierney also explained what was in the famous Tesco bag he carried into an FA Cup clash with Sheffield United.
Footage went viral online of Tierney getting off the bus at Brammall Lane while his teammates sported designer boot bags. It led to him being teased by the rest of the squad but Tierney won man of the match that day en-route to FA Cup final glory.
‘I don’t think it’s that bad,’ he said. ‘I got slagged rotten from the boys and on the internet but it’s sound.
‘It was my boots in the bag. Obviously, at the start of all this (Covid-19) we had to carry our own boots and stuff.
‘And I’m not sitting washing my boots every day, so I’m carrying my boots from training the day before and they are stinking so I was like: “Get them in that Tesco bag and wrap it up”.
‘I think there was a bit of chocolate in there as well for after the game. You can’t go wrong with a Dairy Milk.’
Now fully fit again, Tierney is hoping to pull on a Scotland jersey for the first time in two years when Steve Clarke’s side face Israel at Hampden in the Nations League on September 4 before facing the Czech Republic a few days later in Olomouc.
He said: ‘I am looking forward to it. They are big games. It’s been a while since I last played for Scotland. There’s always something that happens. There was something with my shoulder and my groin before that but all being well — and if selected — I will be ready.’
It was sad the way it ended, people turning and all that