Leigh Griffiths: Will He Heed Brendan’s Warnings?
I never thought I’d write about Leigh Griffiths in this manner, but Brendan Rodgers clearly has concerns on this score and they ought not to be ignored.
Leigh has already done a lot in his career, more than the players named above.
He is well on the way to scoring 100 goals in a Celtic shirt, but the Derek Riordan comparisons are haunting, and troubling.
Both players played at Hibs, of course, and scored plenty of goals in their green shirts before coming to Celtic Park.
Both are worshiped by the Hibs fans, and are considered “part” of that support.
Both have also been slammed for singing the same stupid song, the one about Rudi Skacel which offended much of Scotland and our pro-immigrant sensibilities.
Leigh Griffiths is 26.
He has clearly made more of his time in the game than Feruz, Watt, Miller or Riordan. That’s not even up for debate. He has a talent in front of goal that far surpasses any of those players. He has won more in his career thus far than Miller or Riordan ever did or Feruz and Watt ever will. But if you accept what Brendan Rodgers is saying he runs the risk of seeing his career cut short, perhaps by years, because he doesn’t look after himself right. It means that for all the talent he has we may on the verge of seeing him as good as he’s going to get, and to many that means a player who’s yet to prove it on the biggest stage of all.
I think that verdict would be harsh; Leigh has already shown he can score regularly here and in Europe.
He is short of the Champions League level – indeed, Brendan laments that because he believes Leigh can make that grade – but few players can honestly be said to have reached that height anyway. Yet I agree with Brendan; he’s perfectly capable of being one of them.
His career will not end, I don’t think, the way that of Feruz looks to be heading, and which Tony Watt will come to if he isn’t careful. Nor will it end with him playing out what should be his best years in a football backwater like Miller settled for.
There is no doubt he will still be a good player at 28, when Riordan effectively chucked it.
But Leigh Griffiths can be more than just a good player at 28.
He can be a great player.
He can go on to be not simply a Celtic legend but an icon at a club where that confers genuine immortality. He has that skill-set, and nobody doubts for a second that he’s dedicated to getting better as a player. But Brendan clearly thinks certain lifestyle choices are affecting his fitness and general conditioning, to a troubling extent. How troubling? That Brendan has mentioned it to the media, in an effort to give Leigh a jolt, should tell you everything you need to know.
This is where we’re lucky with this guy in charge, and where Leigh might be lucky too. Brendan wants the whole club to be all it can be, and he wants Leigh to make the right decisions about his future. He’s a man who’s clearly worth listening to.
Leigh was one of those guys who got enormous stick in the press for a wee while, and all of it was grossly unfair. He’s not the bad lad the media has sometimes made him out to be; you don’t hear stories of him being involved in pub brawls and other such nonsense. He’s also a responsible dad; he may have kids to several different women but he hasn’t abandoned any of them; his relationship with them is there for everyone to see.
I love this guy; I’m delighted that he’s a Celtic player and I want to see him stay at the club for a long time. His contract has four more years on it; by then he should be chasing goal 200. He’s that good, which is why I hope he pays attention to what Brendan has to say.
I could have written about other players in this piece; every club has its own horror story, but Watt, Feruz, Miller and Riordan are especially prominent as we had such high hopes for all of them at one time.
Watt’s goal against Barcelona is one of the most famous in the history of our club; that goal and that moment deserved a better ending than what it got. But it was no less significant than the one Liam Miller scored against Lyon, in defining a “what might have been” narrative of a career. We saw flashes of it with Islam Feruz, including some wonderful performances in the dark blue of Scotland’s youth teams when he was still a Celtic player. Derek Riordan in his two spells at Hibs showed us exactly what he might have done in the Hoops had he been a little more willing to toe the line and had Gordon been willing to cut him a little slack.
(Oh there was blame on both sides there, and no doubt about it.)
They are the case-studies every aspiring player should look at.
I am confident that Leigh Griffiths won’t be joining them in the Big Book of Regrets.
