McLeish says striker’s jersey is still very much up for grabs
IT seems Leigh Griffiths performs better when he has something to prove. Witness, for example, the upturn in the Celtic striker’s form since the apparent “kick in the teeth” of finding out Steven Naismith would start upfront for Scotland ahead of him in next week’s match against Israel.
That is why Celtic supporters and followers of the national side may not want the forward to hear that there seems to have been a misunderstanding.
Scotland head coach Alex McLeish moved yesterday to clear up Griffiths’ apparent misconception over the solidity of Naismith’s place in the starting 11 after his goal against Albania last month, claiming the striker’s jersey is very much still up for grabs.
And, with both Naismith and Griffiths now in red-hot form on the domestic front, McLeish is enjoying the headache of choosing between the pair.
“I think you’ve always got to prove yourself,” said McLeish as he announced his 23-man squad for the trip to Haifa next week and the following Sunday’s friendly against Portugal at Hampden.
“I didn’t say to anybody after the last international ‘You’ll definitely be playing in the next game’. You give yourself a chance and that’s all you can ask for.
“What I saw in Leigh’s final sentence was ‘It is up to prove that we’re good enough’, and then he goes out and bangs in three goals [for Celtic].
“That’s great. That’s the kind of positivity we’re looking for and the type of reaction. We want to see that kind of Scottish mentality coming to the fore.
“I’ve never had a long conversation with Leigh from the point of view of trying to get into his mindset, but he knows where the net is.”
McLeish joked that Griffiths had blanked a phone call from him in the aftermath of making his comments, but the national coach has certainly not been blanking the striker’s recent goalscoring form.
“There’s a lot of things we analyse and you choose the team for each game as it comes along,” said McLeish. “I haven’t spoken to Leigh since the last game. I tried to call him, but he blanked me. I’ll see him when he comes here.”
Suddenly, after a fallow period for Scotland in the striking department, McLeish seems to have genuine options up front, with Swansea City’s Oli McBurnie and Sporting Kansas City’s Johnny Russell joining Griffiths and Naismith in the squad.
McLeish is hoping that the Scots can put themselves in a strong position to qualify from their UEFA Nations League group by following up their opening day win over Albania against an Israel side in transition.
“It’s never easy to go away from home but we go with a bit of confidence from the Albania game,” he said.
“We want be as positive as we can be away from home. I’m not saying we open ourselves up but we want to still play at a tempo that we feel this group of players can give us.
“They looked as if they were a team in transition [in their last game against Northern Ireland] and they are a wee bit. It wasn’t a terrible performance by them. There were some parts of it that they will look to try to improve upon but we want to go away from home and be a threat to anybody we play.”