Dundee manager James McPake has come out and condemned the opposition players today at Ibrox for trying to provoke Leigh Griffiths. Griffiths and Dundee were playing in Govan today during SPFL action when these events occurred.
Griffiths has always been a divisive character and recently was shipped out of Celtic for behaviour unbefitting a player in the Hooped shirt. The striker who hit over 100 goals for the club during his time at Parkhead always enjoyed ribbing the new Ibrox club in his clashes against them throughout the years.
For a while, Leigh Griffiths came to symbolise the haunting of Sevco as he put them to the sword on several different occasions in the seven years he was with Celtic. Universally hated amongst their fanbase, it is no surprise to hear he has been targeted again by not just fans but players.
Boss McPake has come out and asserted the belief that Griffiths was antagonised by theRangers support today at Ibrox. Speaking to Scottish Sun, he said: “Leigh went on and you could see what they were trying to do – in my opinion. He gets booked and then all of a sudden there is a riot about to happen – because it’s Leigh.
“(the)Rangers players were coming from everywhere but fair play to my team. Paul McMullan, Liam Fontaine, Ryan Sweeney, Paul McGowan all got involved to help their team-mate out. That’s togetherness. That’s what I want to see from my team.
“Leigh is going to get a hostile reception at Ibrox. He gets one everywhere he goes so I didn’t think he wouldn’t get one here. But it never crossed my mind to say, ‘Oh I’m worried about putting him on’. Leigh is a character who can take it.”
It is no surprise whatsoever that Leigh was subject to special treatment at Ibrox today. They know he has a fiery temperamemt at the best of times and will have no doubt seen an opportunity to have Dundee reduced to ten men. I’m afraid the writing has been on the wall for Leigh for some time now and he will now slip into the history books of wasted talent and forgotten men.
Such a shame. We all hoped for more for the player but in the end it wasn’t enough.
Paul Gillespie
Don’t blame the huns for giving him stick, he gave them plenty so do not see a problem with it. He was out of order tying the scarf to the posts, imagine the huns had just pumped us on our own patch and one of their players was doing that, there would have been fans trying to get on the pitch. Another thing, when he was off for 10 months was it, with an illness i have personal experience of, said at the time and will say it here, if after 3 months he was told he would be getting paid statuary sick pay he would have been back at Lennoxtown the next day, in short he was at it in my opinion. Wish him all the best, but as a player he is finished, and you can be sure when he hangs his boots up and looks back he will have a lot of regrets, griff was good, but he could have been so much better if he had lived the life of a professional athlete.
He’s just a scumbag