Sevco websites and twitter feeds are buzzing today after a little reported on Leigh Griffiths interview from three days ago suddenly went viral, plunging their fans into a frenzy of teeth gnashing and wailing. In the interview, with The Evening Times, which was overlooked by most people in the run-up to the transfer window and in the general malaise that always accompanies international weeks, the Celtic striker gave an honest assessment of where he sees the clubs at the moment.
“There are 60,000 supporters looking forward to this one. I don’t think Rangers will be, after the start they have made … They will be looking at us and looking at the way we start at home – if we get one in early then we could make it a very difficult afternoon for them,” he said.
Few would disagree with that sentiment.
If you’ve been watching their games, and comparing the way they play to the way we do, there’s a night and day difference. That pace I highlighted yesterday will come to the fore in the match, and Griffiths knows that too.
In the interview he waxed lyrical about the start we’ve made to the season and about the Champions League draw. He spoke about the mood in the dressing room. Everything in the piece was bang on. None of it was cause for controversy, not even the part the Sevco fans appear to be utterly foaming at the mouth over.
“We played probably our worst game of the season last year against them and they scraped through against us on penalties. So that shows how tough we are to beat …”
Show me where in that statement there’s something worth getting in a strop about?
It’s nothing more than a simple statement of fact.
If you beat a team on penalties you can hardly claim to have played them off the park.
As bad as we were that day, that was the margin of victory.
It wasn’t the one-sided slaughter some of them appear to believe.
I thought we were dreadful. I thought we were over-cautious, tactically inflexible, we gave them too much of the ball and we didn’t press them or get our own players forward enough. I said yesterday that pace could have been utilised in that game and given us a decided advantage, and it wasn’t.
That, as much as anything, is why Ronny is no longer our manager.
Griffiths told the simple truth, but there’s nothing that infuriates these muppets more than hearing that. They’ve lived so long in a bubble that they can’t stand to have it punctured even a wee bit far less burst. They’ve already given Leigh a ton of abuse in the past, so the current nonsense will be nothing new to him, or to the rest of us.
The more laughable comments I’ve read on their forums and elsewhere suggest he should be put in front of the SFA disciplinary board!
When their own managing director can excuse sectarian singing and thuggish fans that one’s just a joke.
Their outpouring of fury over a simple interview is pretty revealing, I guess. The volume of their anger suggests that many of them recognise that Griffiths has this one right on, and deep down are well aware that they rode their luck that day and have been doing it ever since.
Well their worst fears will be made real in just eight days.