The media has spent the last few months trying to sell Moussa Dembele.
After their stories of the other night, about AC Milan, went nowhere, not even being picked in Italy, the alleged country of origin, certain sections of the press have subtly changed the story; now it’s Griffiths who is the subject of bids, and from Leeds United in particular.
They probably reckon that this story has juice, or can be given some, with the idea that Griffiths and our manager don’t share the best relationship; except that it’s not true. Brendan has offered guidance to Leigh, he’s trying to make him the best player he can be.
And Leigh knows this full well, and wants to make his career all it can be.
On top of that, we know that he loves Celtic and wants to have that career here. How do we know that? Because he is passionate about life with our club. He puts in the time. He enjoys winning here. He wants to be on the park every second he can. Sure, he could go elsewhere and play every week but this is Leigh’s club now, and he can be a legend here, as part of this all conquering team and you could see what it meant to him at full time.
He also respects Brendan. He knows his little moment when he flew off the handle recently was wrong, and he apologised for it. He did the right thing there. He usually does. It’s one of the reasons the kid is so easy to like; he’s screwed up a few times but he’s not a bad guy.
He used to get a lot of stick in the media, but even that’s died down since some home truths were pointed out to them, including that he’s a good dad and not some deadbeat who abandoned his kids the moment they were born. Leigh Griffiths is a decent bloke.
He’s also ambitious. Here, at Celtic, there’s Champions League football. Leeds? Come on. There are some who say they are a massive club; maybe once. But like Rangers, their modern incarnation was built on debt and they crashed. They have never recovered. People talk a lot about them being one year from the EPL; forgive me for saying so but we’ve heard it before, and before, and before. That club has fallen so low I wonder if they’ll ever get back up.
There is no way that Leigh would turn in a transfer request over interest from Leeds.
There is no way that Celtic would respond positively to a bid from them. The whole story is a non-story but they reckon they can make this one run because they hope they can unsettle Leigh with the idea of more money, a return to England and regular football.
He doesn’t particularly care about the first, and he’s making a good living right now. A return to England would part him from his children, and we know how he feels about that. As to regular football, even in a season where he wasn’t a first choice player he still made 35 appearances in all competitions and scored 18 goals.
Not bad for someone “on the fringes.”
We’ll be seeing a lot more of him in the next 12 months.