STOP THE FLAK
Griffiths pleads with Celtic support to give under-f ire Lennon and Lawwell a break
LEIGH GRIFFITHS has urged the Celtic support to lay off Neil Lennon and Peter Lawwell.
Manager Lennon and chief executive Lawwell have been under persistent fire during an abject season that has left Celtic 23 points adrift in the title race after early exits from Europe and the League Cup.
With hopes of ten in a row all but extinguished, there is now the possibility of the club enduring a trophyless season for only the second time since 2003.
Griffiths, who has struggled for fitness and form throughout the campaign, insists Lennon retains the backing of the players in the dressing room.
The striker said: ‘We want him to stay for as long as possible because we feel he’s the right man for the job.
‘There has been talk about his position and also Mr Lawwell’s position. But fans quickly forget what those two have done for this club.
‘The gaffer has won five out of six (trophies) since he came back, Mr Lawwell has won the last nine league titles and guided us to a quadruple Treble.
‘The fans are hurting more than any of us. It’s up to the players to put that right.’
THROUGHOUT his seven years at Celtic, Leigh Griffiths has been able to rely upon the support of club directors, management and team-mates. Dogged by personal issues which have affected his physical and mental wellbeing, the striker has stretched the patience of peers and superiors alike, yet has never been cut loose.
So, as the club finds itself embroiled in its most stressful episode in a decade, it’s somewhat proper that he should seek to repay some of that benevolence.
Chief executive Peter Lawwell, manager Neil Lennon and Scott Brown were all on Griffiths’ mind as he spoke with typical candour about the mess the club finds itself in.
The first two have found themselves the focus of supporter anger, principally through the astonishing capitulation that has seen ten in a row turn into a pipe dream after years of unfettered dominance.
Brown, formerly the club’s strutting captain but reduced to a bit-part player in recent weeks, added his own contribution to an unedifying narrative with the act of petulance that drew a red card as more points were shed in a blizzard at Livingston in midweek.
The fallout from the ill-advised mid-season trip to Dubai has seen the club’s grasp of the public mood seem as loose as its grip of the Premiership trophy.
Despite Lawwell admitting that ‘in hindsight’ a trip to Dubai in the middle of a pandemic had been a mistake, Lennon rowed back on the CEO’s apology at a fiery news conference on Monday.
After that midweek draw in West Lothian, the manager then conceded that he had been worried abut his position ‘for some time’.
Griffiths, however, wants it to be known that just as the manager stuck with him as recently as last summer when he returned from lockdown out of condition, so he has Lennon’s back.
Furthermore, he gave credence to recent reports suggesting the club’s major shareholder Dermot Desmond is prepared to run with the current management team until the end of the season.
‘We want the manager to stay for as long as possible because we feel he is still the right man for the job,’ said Griffiths.
‘I’m sure he’s had assurances from Mr Lawwell and Mr Desmond, who he will be in regular contact with. If anything was to have happened on that front, I’m sure we’d have been the first to know.
‘There has been talk about his position and also Mr Lawwell’s position. But you need to remember what these guys have done for the club.’
The fans, too, have backed Griffiths unconditionally, not least when he opened up on his battles with depression.
However, there has been a growing disconnect between the supporters and institution this season, a relationship strained by the team’s demise and further damaged by the lockout caused by the pandemic.
There were car-park scuffles after the League Cup defeat to Ross County and subsequent banner protests calling for Lennon and Lawwell to go.
‘The fans support us and we all love them, we want them back in the stadium as soon as possible so they can cheer us on,’ insisted Griffiths. ‘But fans quickly forget what those two have done for the club.
‘The gaffer has won five out of six (trophies) since he came back. Mr Lawwell has won the last nine domestic league titles and guided us to a quadruple Treble. Yes, the fans are hurting more than any of us. It’s up to us players to put that right.’ There’s more than a tinge of personal regret to Griffiths’ words as he insists it’s the men on the pitch who should bear the blame for this season’s collapse.
When his manager needed him most — not least when star striker Odsonne Edouard tested positive for Covid ahead of the pivotal defeat to Steven Gerrard’s Rangers in October — Griffiths was not fit enough to start.
A fit and firing Griffiths might have covered a multitude of sins and possibly even sparked an improvement in Edouard’s listless form through the autumn but, having been excluded from a pre-season trip to France, he remained a bit-part player.
Only since belatedly whipping himself into shape by December did he manage to claim a regular starting spot alongside Edouard, a partnership that helped the team motor into an impressive lead this time last year.
The form of Gerrard’s team this year means that even a perfect run from now until the end of the season from Celtic, the outcome should still be a formality for Rangers.
Lennon stands to go down as the man who lost ‘the ten’ but Griffiths insists the blame should be proportionate.
‘You always feel for him,’ continued Griffiths. ‘Especially as we are the ones who can affect what you people say.
‘We are the ones who need to take most of the responsibility. We are the ones out there playing for three points and we are not putting in the performances.
‘The manager and the coaching staff can give you all the instructions possible but ultimately it’s us players who are failing to carry out those instructions perfectly. We’re not giving them what they want.
‘We are still doing the same things as last season. The coaching that the gaffer, Kendo (John Kennedy) and Gav (Gavin Strachan) give us is brilliant.
‘It’s just not been a great season. But we still have time to turn it around. It’s the old cliché about game by game. We were disappointed after Livingston but we’re now looking ahead to Hamilton.’
And yet, even faced with such a
‘WE WANT THE MANAGER TO STAY AT CELTIC FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE’
routine assignment against the league’s bottom-placed team, you wouldn’t trust Celtic to get the job done.
The sight of Brown being drawn into an utterly needless off-the ball flashpoint with Livingston’s Jaze Kabia five minutes after arriving as a substitute in midweek summed up the sheer indiscipline that has blighted the campaign.
‘Broony is Broony,’ said Griffiths. ‘At times, he has been the one who has had his arm round me and he has had his arm round some of the other players, too.
‘It’s time for us to do that for him. Livingston was a little bit of a moment of madness, you could say.
‘Yeah, he let us down a bit but he will be easily forgiven after what he has given the club so far.
‘But there have been times where he has pulled his socks up and helped us all through.’
Lennon began the week with a combative press conference in which he U-turned on Lawwell’s public apology for the Dubai trip, rounded on the hypocrisy he believes he has seen in Scotland surrounding Covid protocol and, almost as an aside, conceded for the first time that catching Rangers to take the league title ‘might’ just be beyond the team.
It was during the Ronny Deila era (the Norwegian boss departed the club having led them to a fifth successive flag) that the Celtic fans started singing about the ten.
Their sense of destiny only increased as they enjoyed success — and some sublime football — under Brendan Rodgers, who bailed out before eight had been clinched in 2018. Lennon stepped in and, although he complete the treble Treble and made it a quadruple Treble with the delayed Scottish Cup victory in December, this has proved a season too far.
‘The fans have wanted this for so long,’ admitted Griffiths. ‘They thought it was a foregone conclusion that we were just going to turn up this season and win the ten. It doesn’t look like that. You need to earn the right to win trophies.
‘We earned that right 12 times in a row but it has not been the case this season.
‘It’s still mathematically possible to do it but it’s going to be a big task now to clinch the ten.’
And so a dressing room that has gorged itself on medals and trophies is now facing up to a new feeling.
‘We have players at this club who do not know what it’s like to lose a league or not win a cup final,’ said Griffiths. ‘I have lost cup finals, I’ve been to semi-finals and lost, and it’s up there with the worst feelings in the world.
‘Thankfully, for the last few years, I have been on a winning side. We also have guys here who have not won a cup yet.
‘We still have the Scottish Cup to play for and until the league is mathematically done, we will give everything to win those two trophies.
‘If we can get back to Hampden in the Scottish Cup, then hopefully I will be on the winning side again.
‘We are not a bad team. Folk might say we are not playing well but every team has a bad spell.
‘I wouldn’t say the stick is easy to shake off but it’s a motivation to try to quieten people down a bit.
‘Yes, we’ve got a big points gap to try and claw back and we have not had the best of seasons but it’s still mathematically possible — we can still win the league.
‘It’s going to take an almighty push from everybody involved.’