The Thumb Being The NED That He Is

[CammyF 6,779]

On 30/10/2022 at 18:08, Method Man said:

I see he's been mentioning retirement. Doesn’t look like the move to AUS has worked out. No deals on the table

 

Oh well tough 

Think he's been back a while and was training with Livingston or at least using their facilities.

[Method Man 17]

1 hour ago, CammyF said:

Think he's been back a while and was training with Livingston or at least using their facilities.

Oh right never knew. Assume no decent team wanted him over there which is nice 😃

[Bill 13,717]

38 minutes ago, Method Man said:

Oh right never knew. Assume no decent team wanted him over there which is nice 😃

It's not hard to predict where this loser will be in ten years' time. On the dole, propping up some backstreet bar, looking at least 60.

[Thinker 855]

7 minutes ago, Bill said:

It's not hard to predict where this loser will be in ten years' time. On the dole, propping up some backstreet bar, looking at least 60.

That, or deid through some variety of substance abuse.

[Bill 13,717]

1 minute ago, Thinker said:

That, or deid through some variety of substance abuse.

For a couple of years back in the early 90's I worked alongside Davie Robb who played for Aberdeen in the 60's and 70's. He died this summer aged 74. Davie was an excellent guy, rough as anything but a kinder heart you couldn't find. He struck me as a typical footballer who battled alcohol for years after hanging up his boots and suffered for it but he was 100 times the man the Thumb will ever be so it wouldn't surprise me if you're right.

[Scott7 5,150]

I somehow managed not to know Davie Robb had died. Not the silkiest player but he knew where the goal was and did his best to get there no matter who was in the way.

[Sutton_blows_goats 4,178]

I have no shame in announcing i will enjoy this creatures downfall greatly. A simpleton who has a track record of being horrible throughout his life.

[Bill 13,717]

1 hour ago, Sutton_blows_goats said:

I have no shame in announcing i will enjoy this creatures downfall greatly. A simpleton who has a track record of being horrible throughout his life.

By the same token, he's a perfect ambassador for what he appears to believe in.

[compo 6,124]

He was good at winding up our fans 

[Uilleam 5,409]

Apologia pro vita male vixit. 

 

An extraordinary article by Mick Grant in today's Times.

 

Trigger warning:

readers may tear up, some with sadness; some with laughter. 

 

You can condemn Leigh Griffiths but do not revel in his fall from grace

Let’s hope striker doesn’t sink into the sort of post-football hardship we’ve seen in others when the game leaves them behind and real life rears up

Michael Grant

Wednesday November 02 2022, 12.01am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/you-can-condemn-leigh-griffiths-but-do-not-revel-in-his-fall-from-grace-2c5hpv7kl

 

 

Leigh Griffiths could have been running out at the Bernabeu tonight to lead the Celtic attack against Real Madrid. Doesn’t that sound absurd? Griffiths at his peak and Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic seem like analogue and digital, two entities belonging to completely different eras. Of course Postecoglou was Griffiths’s last Celtic manager, the last who gave him a chance at the biggest club of his career and the last who approved a new contract. Yet just 15 months later they inhabit very, very different worlds.

 

There is a single prevailing reaction to anything Griffiths says these days and there was an outpouring of it from those who watched his weekend interview on BBC Scotland. Griffiths did a few joyless keepie-uppies on a small pitch in his back garden, the lost boy no-one wants to play with. He talked about waiting for the phone to ring and a manager, any manager, rescuing him with the offer him a new gig. He talked about his fall from grace and the low point of that highly dubious off-field behaviour which torpedoed him at Celtic.

There was some whingeing about not being able to go to the shops without getting abuse because “that’s the stigma you have when you’re playing with one side of the Old Firm”. The headline quote was: “The longer it goes on I think: is football for me anymore?” Putting it that way sounded like he had some element of agency in the matter. Actually Griffiths wants to keep playing at a high level and no club thinks him capable of it. It’s not whether football’s for him any more, as if he has plenty of other things on his plate and could take or leave it. It’s that top clubs don’t think he’s worth bothering with and aren’t giving him the option.

And the widespread reaction to whatever Griffiths comes out with now is cold and unsympathetic. Contemptuous, too. How could it be anything else? He has joined a long list of talented Scottish mavericks who blew it. Postecoglou was always going to sign Kyogo Furuhashi and other high-energy runners last season but, had Griffiths lived his life differently, looked after himself properly, no manager would have rushed him out of town. His record would have demanded he be taken seriously.

Of course Griffiths shouldn’t be some sort of clapped out old nag. Henrik Larsson played his last game for Celtic at 32 and was still in good enough condition to then appear with distinction for Barcelona and Manchester United. Kris Boyd played until he was 35. Ally McCoist called it a day for Kilmarnock at 38. Lionel Messi is 35. Cristiano Ronaldo’s still preening in front of dressing room mirrors at 37. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is an AC Milan player at 41.

 

Griffiths has only just turned 32 and there he is kicking a ball around in his back garden and looking so forlorn the footage could have been in black and white. The familiar claim made for Griffiths — get him fit and he’ll get you 40 goals a season — is silent now. That ship has sailed and it is a reference to a striker who no longer exists. Griffiths did score 40 in a season in 2015-16 but his body is not up to that any more and he has accumulated more baggage than Heathrow.

The jokes used to be about all those children to all those different women — five kids to three mothers and the punchlines had him going around like a bull in breeding season — before the subject matter took a darker turn. That police investigation into improper online messages to an underage girl ended up with Griffiths being cleared of any criminality but the episode closed all sorts of doors on him. He had already been given time off by Celtic to address depression and mental health issues but the investigation made many recoil from him even when he was cleared. So a guy who was never going to win any fitness or conditioning awards drifted away from Celtic through Dundee and Falkirk to Mandurah City in Australia and back again to train at Livingston and mope around in the back garden.

 

Calling Griffiths a waster is the easy bit. Of course he is, given that for all he achieved at club level he had a level of ability which should have empowered him to do much more. Supporters resent the laziness and unprofessionalism they see in wasted talents and Griffiths already had a vast constituency of fans dead set against him after all that tying Celtic scarves to the Ibrox posts and cleaning his nose on a Rangers corner flag. The Celtic support lapped up all of that, loved him waving a Tricolour when he was in with the away fans at Ibrox. But even they turned against him after the police investigation. They booed him in a pre-season friendly against West Ham United last year. Plenty wanted their club to wash its hands of him. As for other rival fans, many think his goalscoring was his only redeeming feature. That isn’t true, he has a bit of charm and wit and can joke at his own expense, but few want anything to do with him.

 

Doubtless he will now dot around a few clubs of decreasing size until it entirely peters out. So let’s hope his future is more fulfilling than it looks now. None of us need to get the violins out for a bloke who became a millionaire from football and who has no-one but himself to blame for how it all turned to ashes. Who would say no to a house and garden big enough for a football pitch? But there’s a difference between condemning Griffith’s behaviour and attitude and actively enjoying his decline and wishing him endless unhappiness.

Let’s hope we’re wrong and he doesn’t sink into the sort of post-football hardship we’ve seen in others when the game leaves them behind and real life rears up. It is natural to suspect that Griffiths is another who could really struggle without the structure and security professional football has given him. No-one should wish that on anyone.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Uilleam