Griffiths Attempts To Clear Up Criticism

Celtic striker Leigh Griffiths has denied inferring bias towards Craig Thomson following his weekend criticism of the referee at Pittodrie.

Griffiths insisted that he was denied an obvious goalscoring opportunity when Andrew Considine brought him down inside the box during his side's 2-1 Premiership defeat by Aberdeen.

After Considine escaped with a yellow card, Griffiths claimed Thomson would have sent a Celtic player off if it had happened in the other box. He said after the game: "If it's up the other end I'm positive, I'd put my mortgage on it, that the referee sends one of our players off.

"If it's up the other end the Aberdeen players would have surrounded him and you can guarantee he sends him off."

Those comments have no doubt been pored over by Scottish Football Association compliance officer Tony McGlennan and Griffiths has sought to protect himself from a potential notice of complaint for inferring bias or incompetence towards the match official.

In a statement on Celtic's official website, Griffiths said: "I never said the referee was biased or not good at his job at all. I've got a good relationship with Craig and I have total respect for him as a referee and a man. I spoke to Craig during the game and he told me the way he saw it.

"It's only my opinion - and it might not have come across - but all I meant was with a home team, the atmosphere, the crowd and their players going in on him, a referee can be put in a very difficult position to make a decision to show a red card.

"That is not a criticism of Craig and there is no way I would question Craig in that way at all."

Griffiths netted the penalty to put Celtic one up, but the champions failed to net against 10 men after Jonny Hayes was controversially sent off for a challenge on Mikael Lustig.

The Scotland striker, whose team face Ajax in their opening Europa League group game on Thursday, said: "Any time a team goes down to 10 men against us we're confident of picking up the three points, so the goal we conceded for their winner was very disappointing. The ball's come a long way and we should have cleared it.

"When we got the penalty and scored it, if they'd gone a man down as well as being 1-0 down, it would have given them a mountain to climb.

"Aberdeen got confidence from their penalty but after the sending off we really should have capitalised on that and got all three points.

"We kept pressing for that second goal which obviously never came and it was just a lapse in concentration that allowed them to score from the free-kick.

"The boys are disappointed but we were back in the next day for a recovery session and we're ready to go again on Thursday."