James McPake refused to directly respond to questions about taking Leigh Griffiths on loan to Dundee.
The Dens Park boss and Griffiths were team-mates at Hibs during a spell in which the striker scored 31 goals in 60 SPL starts.
That sort of scoring rate would be welcomed at any club in the top flight but it’s now five years since Griffiths scored double figures in a league season, it is more than 18 months since he played a full 90 minutes.
There are other issues surrounding Griffiths but after getting the better of Motherwell yesterday a goal from Tony Watt sent Dundee to defeat leaving them with two points from four matches.
Asked about being linked with Griffiths, McPake told BT Sport:
I’ve been linked with move for a lot of players. The transfer window is getting ready to shut and I’ll be linked with a moves for maybe three, four, five or six players. I’m not going to stand and say what we’re looking for but, yes, we’re hoping to do business.
We created enough chances. I thought we were very fluent, particularly in the first half, we were causing them all sorts of problems.
It was a poor goal for us to lose. We did a lot of work on set-plays all week because we felt that’s where they could hurt us most.
But I’m extremely proud of what the players gave out there and on another day you win that game pretty comfortably because, I think everybody will be in agreement with me here, the better team lost that game.
This season Griffiths has only made a 35 minute appearance in a friendly against West Ham with Ange Postecoglou preferring to go with Kyogo Furuhashi, Odsonne Edouard and Albian Ajeti.
Throughout his Celtic career he has made a habit of bouncing back after being written off but at the age of 31 it looks like he may have played his last game for the hoops.