CELTIC opened up voting for their annual Player of the Year Awards vote yesterday, sparking some fierce debate among supporters about who deserves the gongs.

Amid such an impressive season to date, narrowing down the shortlist to just six first-team players for the main award would have been a tough task as it was, never mind selecting the overall winner, with Callum McGregor, Tom Rogic, Joe Hart, Jota, Kyogo and Cameron Carter-Vickers making up the sextet.

Regular readers will know that this correspondent has already nailed his colours to the mast on this one, making a case in these pages recently for Celtic skipper McGregor to be named as Scotland’s player of the year.

Such has the consistency of some of Celtic’s main performers though, if any of those other players scooped the accolade, there could be little cause for complaint.

To my mind though, there can only be one winner of the club’s Young Player of the Year award, even though the four-man field is stacked with quality players. With no offence intended to Matt O’Riley, Stephen Welsh or David Turnbull, it can only be Liel Abada.

The Israeli winger has been a revelation since his rather unheralded arrival at the club in the summer for a fee of £3.6m from Maccabi Petah Tikva. He was just 19 at the time, and despite a reasonably hefty price-tag for one so young, he has more than repaid Celtic’s investment in him already.

The obvious thing he has over the other three players on the short-list for a start-off is that his contribution has been consistent throughout the season.

Welsh was thrown in at the early stages of the campaign before the arrival of Ange Postecoglou’s preferred partnership of Carter-Vickers and Carl Starfelt, but the Scotland under-21 captain has found first-team opportunities hard to come by ever since.

Turnbull was also a key performer for Celtic in the early part of the season, taking on a good bulk of the creative burden in behind the frontman. The hamstring injury he sustained in the League Cup Final in December though has disrupted his season, and he has only recently returned to action.

O’Riley has had a similarly bright and immediate impact since arriving in Scottish football as Abada did, but he was only signed in January, and does not yet have the number of appearances required – as impressive as those outings may have been – to trouble Abada for the honour.

The winger set the tone immediately for what was to follow, scoring on his competitive debut for the club in the Champions League qualifying tie against FC Midtjylland at Celtic Park. He has since racked up a further 48 appearances, scoring 15 goals in total already in his debut season in Scotland.

And there have been some crucial goals in there too.

He has a goal to his name against Rangers, scoring the third in the Celtic Park rout in early February as he ghosted in past Borna Barisic to bury the visitors by the interval. He got the opener on the night that Anthony Ralston headed home a late, late winner against Ross County, too.

It is perhaps his own injury-time stunner in late January though that may well have repaid Celtic’s transfer outlay on him in one fell swoop, as he took the ball down inside the Dundee United area as the clock ticked over the 90th minute mark with the score locked at 0-0.

With 60,000 punters sharply inhaling at once, he was the coolest man in the stadium as he buried the ball high past Benjamin Siegrist, ensuring that Celtic narrowed the gap on Rangers to just two points at the top of the Premiership table, rather than having them fall four points behind.

It could prove a potentially pivotal moment in the title race, with Celtic not letting slip of their momentum ever since, impetus that would surely have been affected had Abada not come up with his late finish.

Not only that, the win afforded Celtic the platform to go on and carry out that thumping of Rangers in the midweek to move top of the pile, an opportunity they grasped and a position they have yet to relinquish.

While the praise for Abada’s impressive introductory campaign in Scottish football should mainly be his, it is hard to overstate the role that not only manager Postecoglou has played in his development, but the huge part that has been played by his compatriot and mentor, Nir Bitton.

The 30-year-old midfielder is one of the elder statesmen of the Celtic dressing room these days, and has often joked about the paternal influence he has had on his young teammate.

“He’s a little boy,” Bitton once said. “Since he came in I look at him and I see myself when I was in his position and signing for Celtic.

“I just want to make sure he settles in. When life outside is easier it makes the football better.

“I’m there to guide him, give him the advice he needs, and just to make his life easier.

“It’s not easy to come from a different country when you are 20-years-old. You leave your parents, your family and friends. Your language is not the best.

“Some people forget it and think you should be on top of your game every week. But it’s not easy at this age – or at any age – but especially this young, coming from another country, adapting to the weather, the language.

“I’m just trying to be here for him.”

Taking all of those factors into account, the impact of Abada has been all the more remarkable. That he has in fact managed to be at the top of his game most weeks is testament to his ability and mentality, and is why he deserves to be Celtic’s young player of the year. Perhaps, even the Premiership’s.