Robert Snodgrass has spoken about his former Scotland and Livingston teammate Leigh Griffiths after the striker scored his first hattrick in four years against St Mirren at the weekend.
Snodgrass has quit international football to prolong his career but he’s not advocating that for Leigh.
The West Ham player has our things into perspective and subtly had a pop at people who were trying to put Leigh down, he even name checks Kris Boyd after his Sky Sports rant.
Boyd went on the record as saying stats don’t lie and Leigh has four weeks to save his career back in January’s we’re now in March and the striker has eight goals, seven more than Alfredo Morelos has managed.
Snodgrass believes some pundits are too quick to judge and don’t take a lot of things into account when they start delivering scathing criticism.
“But it does feel sometimes in the football industry as if people like to focus on the negatives rather than on the positives. That’s certainly been the case with Leigh and when it gets too much it can end up giving the lad a lack of confidence.” Snodgrass told RecordSport.
“You don’t become a bad player overnight. He lost his way but that was the result of a mixture of different things from people talking about him, to his private life and various injuries. It doesn’t help social media has given everyone a platform to absolutely destroy people either. You’ve no idea how hard that can be.
“No disrespect but the reason Kris Boyd and others were having a go was because they know Leigh is better than what he was showing at that time.”
“But what no one knows is what Leigh was having to go through, whether it was injuries or problems in his private life.
“It did seem as if a lot of people were coming out and criticising him without taking any of that into account. It was like, ‘He should just deal with it because he’s a professional football player. It’s part and parcel of the job’.
“He’s only human at the end of the day. He’s going to feel it when people are criticising him, just like anyone else would.
“As a matter of fact, a lot of players start to feel it more as they get older. They have problem with anxiety, they get worried about their game, worried about injuries and worried that they are going to break down. It happens to a lot of lads.”
