Neil Lennon has revealed the circumstances that led to Leigh Griffiths being left out of his 18 man squad for the League Cup Final at Hampden.
The striker had appeared as a substitute in each of Celtic’s last four matches but when the squad was announced for Hampden he was left out alongside Scott Sinclair and Moritz Bauer.
Griffiths missed six months of last season as he dealt with personal issues but appeared to be on his right tracks when he scored three times in the opening weeks of the season.
A thigh injury towards the end of September halted his progress leaving Lennon heavily reliant on Odsonne Edouard to lead the line.
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Lee will be involved this week (away to Cluj). We were going to start Odsonne if he had been fit and Leigh would have been on the bench but the fact Odsonne couldn’t start we decided to go with Morgan to start and bring Odsonne on. So we couldn’t get Leigh on the bench, it was nothing to do with fitness levels or anything like that.
Edouard will be left out of the squad heading to Romania on Wednesday afternoon with a hectic domestic programme coming up.
Between December 15 and 29 Celtic face five games in the SPFL, if they can take full points they will finish the year with at least an eight point lead in their bid for a ninth successive title win.
