Celtic fans had seen it all before when James Forrest and John Guidetti fought for the right to take a penalty during the Scottish League Cup final in March of this year.

They would have hoped not to see it again as it was embarrassing and Forrest ended up missing the chance to extend their lead.

But it happened yet again against Icelandic champions Stjarnan in their recent Champions League qualifier when midfielder Stefan Johansen tried to take the ball off of designated penalty kick taker Leigh Griffiths. Again a Scot would stand firm against a Scandinavian teammate and again the Scot would miss the penalty.

The Scottish champs take a two goal lead to Iceland this week and will hope to finally end Stjarnan’s European hopes.

But manager Ronny Deila has to sit down his squad and tell them that they need to stop fighting over penalties. It shows disrespect to the management and causes tension in the crowd.

Passion is a great thing but it has to be curbed if it is going to affect the team.

Now even though Leigh missed from the spot last Wednesday night, the Scottish international still deserves to remain on penalty duties in my opinion.

He didn’t get a fair run at it, Johansen should never have attempted to step in and takeover. All the Norwegian did was heighten Leigh’s anxiety levels and distract him from the ob in hand. No Icelandic player could have got into Griffiths head as well as Johansen did that night.

So Griffiths deserves to get a proper chance to show off his penalty skills. Should he miss the next one then let Johansen or Nadir Ciftci takeover and have their shot!

The striker has quickly shown his boss that the miss hasn’t dented his confidence after he bagged a hattrick against Spanish cracks SD Eibar in a weekend friendly.

Both Griffiths and Johansen are fine players and contributed greatly to Celtic’s cause last term but both need to leave their emotions to one side when it comes to penalties and do what’s best for the team and listen to their manager.

Posted on July 21st, 2015 by scott
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