Astana accuse Griffiths of punching defender

Champions league: Striker plays down accusation and says he expects Hoops to ‘fly out the traps’ next week

FC Astana have taken to their official Twitter account to post a clip of Leigh Griffiths’ clash with Igor Shitov, which earned the Celtic striker a yellow card in Wednesday night’s 1-1 draw in Kazakhstan.

The tweet translates to “Griffiths punches Shitov in the match” and the footage shows the Hoops forward appearing to push the Belarus international defender to the ground inside the penalty box during the first leg of their Champions League third qualifying round at the Astana Arena.

Italian referee Paolo Mazzoleni booked Griffiths, who scored two minutes later to level the first-half opener from defender Yuri Logvinenko.

After the game, Griffiths told a number of newspapers: “There was a bit of handbags and one of their men went down.

“Both of us could have been booked to be honest.

“The ref could have let it go, but I was the one who got booked.

“But I managed to silence the crowd a few minutes later, so it worked out fine.”

Griffiths, who grabbed his second goal of the season, has no doubt that Celtic will progress to the play-offs.

The Scotland striker warned Astana that the Hoops will be looking to start the return game next week as positively as they had in the previous qualifier against Lincoln Red Imps, when they blew away the part-timers to recover the shock 1-0 first-leg defeat with a 3-0 win.

“We got that away goal and now we’ll look to build on that next week,” he told broadcast media.

“We’ll come out of the traps flying, like we did against Lincoln and hopefully we will get that early goal and try and kill their confidence.

“The big man (Junior Kabananga) was a handful up front for them, but I have no doubts about our defence next week and the way we set up and I think next week we’ll definitely finish the job off.

“We knew that they would have a lot of pressure.

“They scored from a set-piece, which was poor from our point of view, but we kept our head down and kept working hard and deserved our away goal.

“They did not create many clear-cut chances – they had a lot of corners, a lot of long throw-ins, but apart from that, Craig Gordon has not had much to do.”

We’ll come out of the traps flying, like we did against Lincoln, and hopefully we will get that early goal and try and kill their confidence. LEIGH GRIFFITHS

Picture: Getty Images. Leigh Griffiths scored a late equaliser to give Celtic an away goal ahead of the return match in Glasgow on Wednesday night.