Neil Lennon fires back at striker Leigh Griffiths over lack of commitment towards addressing lockdown fitness

Neil Lennon has fired again in his disagreement with Leigh Griffiths as he claimed the Celtic striker snubbed the supply of lockdown coaching periods.

he former Hoops boss was left livid final summer season when the Scotland frontman turned up for pre-season out of form.

Things didn’t enhance a lot over the next marketing campaign and the 30-year-old spent a lot of the season on the bench.

Out-of-contract Griffiths — who remains to be ready to study if new Celtic supervisor Ange Postecoglou will hand him a contemporary deal — fired again earlier this week, claiming he was “at occasions” given a uncooked deal by Lennon after which caretaker boss John Kennedy following the Lurgan man’s February exit.

But these phrases drew a blunt rebuke from his former boss as Lennon mentioned Griffiths failed to hitch his team-mates in taking on the possibility to place in further periods throughout final 12 months’s Covid-19 shutdown.

And Lennon issued an extra warning to the hitman, telling Griffiths his days on the prime are numbered if he doesn’t buck up his concepts.

“He let himself down,” he informed BBC Scotland’s Euros Breakfast Show.

“He’s on full pay for the three months of lockdown and he comes again, completely out of situation and a stone chubby, when he couldn’t afford to be as a result of he hadn’t performed a lot soccer within the earlier 18 months to 2 years.

“We had labored actually onerous with him to get him again on observe, and earlier than lockdown he was within the crew and scoring objectives and doing completely superb.

“Then he comes again fully out of situation, manner, manner behind any of the remainder of them and, for me, that was completely unacceptable.

“During the lockdown, the three months off, we opened the coaching floor for the gamers. You couldn’t come into the constructing however my health coach arrange health coaching for the gamers daily.

“So you’ll are available in, in teams of two, and prepare for an hour a day — health work, daily.

“Callum McGregor, Scott Brown, James Forrest, Greg Taylor, Jonny Hayes — all of the lads that lived in Scotland got here in. Leigh didn’t are available in at some point, not at some point throughout the lockdown.

“You can take a horse to water however you possibly can’t pressure it to drink.

“It’s superb him approaching publicly and saying he’s going to do that and that. Well, he’s not performed it for a protracted, very long time. We began him in opposition to AC Milan however we needed to take him off after 45 minutes as a result of the sport was too fast for him. He wasn’t in the best situation.

“Leigh’s attempting to make it out that it was alright (the best way he let himself down) but it surely’s not. He’s saying, ‘I’ll show individuals fallacious — he hasn’t proved anyone fallacious. He’s not on the stage of being a Champions League participant, he didn’t get picked for Scotland — it’s a must to ask why.

“He’ll say he didn’t play sufficient video games, in the direction of the top of the season I wasn’t there, John (Kennedy) clearly felt that he wasn’t in the best state of mind or situation to play for Celtic, which is a really excessive normal and I don’t suppose Leigh received anyplace close to these requirements during the last 12 months or so.”

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