LEIGH Griffiths has been taken back into the Celtic first-team training fold but it remains to be seen what the judgement is on his fitness levels.
The 29-year-old has trained with the rest of the senior squad since their return from a pre-season tournament in France this week.
Celtic play Ross County this afternoon and Hibs tomorrow in hastily arranged friendly games ahead of the season kicking off next Sunday against Hamilton Accies. One of Neil Lennon’s reasons for not including the striker in his squad for the training camp at Loughborough University and the trip to France to play in the Veolia tournament was an assessment that he was miles off match fitness.
Griffiths also missed last week’s friendly against Paris Saint-Germain in the Parc des Princes as Celtic lost 4-0.
Lennon did not mince his words in the aftermath of the decision to leave Griffiths at home while the senior side stepped up their preparations for the season kicking off. The Parkhead manager made his anger clear and while he stopped short of saying that he had finally lost patience with the 29-year-old, he did insist that he needed to “get his head down.”
Griffiths has stayed off social media since Lennon criticised his reaction to being left back at Lennoxtown – the striker had used his Instagram
account to post a lengthy
motivation quote from the 2006 movie Rocky Balboa about
rising up – but whether there has been a shift in fitness in the last fortnight to get him up to speed with the rest of the squad will be revealed in Lennon’s team selection this afternoon and tomorrow.
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