Celtic statement as Griffiths causes another controversy

Leigh Griffiths doesn’t need to go looking for trouble at Celtic, it just seems to follow him around or he has a knack of triggering it himself.

Given his precarious position in the squad anyway over fitness issues, Griffiths needs to focus on the football and not other distractions. There are limits to how many chances Neil Lennon and Celtic can give Griffiths, he may well have gone beyond that point already and had his last chance at the club.

With all the focus on Aberdeen players breaching the covid-19 football rules, the last thing we need is a Celtic player falling foul of the guidelines. Probably most fans guess on who that could be would lead to Griffiths as prime suspect. And they’d be correct.

His partner Caitlyn Melville didn’t help his cause by posting pictures of a birthday party Griffiths had organised for her at home. That probably shows the simple innocence behind the small scale gathering, but the focus and profile on sporting bubble football guidelines raises the prominence. The pictures on Instagram have since been deleted, but the damage has been done. It was a small celebration, it wasn’t a large riotous gathering. Much of the social media debate has been about the birthday cake and who carried it in.

Without doubt Griffiths should have known better. This reinforces the advice Celtic and other clubs will have provided to their players following the Aberdeen incident. Keep to the agreed bubbles created, don’t stray beyond and avoid catching and sharing the virus.

Celtic have looked at this latest incident and spoken to Griffiths with several media sources commenting on it.

The club say they see it as a small breach and the media reports quote them as:

"“We’re aware of it and he has been reminded of his responsibilities”."

This won’t affect his selection for the match at Kilmarnock this weekend. Griffiths was already ruled out injured. But at a time when he’s in another apparent last chance scenario and with new strikers on Lennon’s shopping list, Griffiths needs to get his head down and concentrate on football and fitness. It is extremely likely he has no more last chances left.