SCOTT Brown, the Celtic captain, last night launched a savage attack on Graeme Shinnie, his Aberdeen counterpart who was called into the Scotland squad this week, and claimed he lacked quality and could only compete with him by fouling.
Brown was the victim of a shocking late challenge by Shinnie in the final Ladbrokes Premiership match of the 2017/18 campaign at Celtic Park on Sunday.
The midfielder confirmed he will be fine to play against Motherwell in the William Hill Scottish Cup final at Hampden this Saturday – a game which his side need to win to become the first to complete a double treble.
But he savaged his opponent, who he exchanged a few terse words with at the end of the match at the weekend, claimed he had “not got great quality” and described his foul as a “little boy’s tackle”.
“The ankle’s fine,” said Brown. “It takes more than that to keep me down. It was a Graeme Shinnie tackle. It sums him up really.
“We had a nice wee chat afterwards. I’ve matured. He was saying that he got close to the ball. But I watched it back and it is kind of a little boy’s tackle – waiting until I was past him. My pace obviously done him in his prime and I got past him.”
Shinnie, who was named in Alex McLeish’s 24-man squad for the end-of-season tour of Peru and Mexico on Monday, had been unrepentant when he was interviewed on television and said “what goes around comes around”.
But Brown responded: “I’m not the one with 15 bookings this season. I think Graeme runs about, he tackles, stuff like that. He’s not got great quality, but he does the best he possibly can.
“It’s the only thing he can probably do to try and stop us – to try and make a bad tackle. To be fair on him, it was a good bad tackle.”
Brown took some time to recover from the foul, which Shinnie was booked for, but he stressed he would be alright to start for Celtic against their top flight rivals Motherwell this weekend.
“My ankle locks now and then,” he said. “It has got no ligaments left in it. It kind of locked. I just needed to open it up again.”
“I felt it quite high up at the time. I was thinking ‘thank goodness I still wear those grandad shinnies that come all the way around and protect everything!’ It wasn’t too bad. I have had worse, but it wasn’t great, especially at the time of year. But as soon as I got up I knew it would be alright.”
Brown stressed he has no concerns about facing Motherwell on Saturday despite the Fir Park club’s renowned uncompromising approach to games.
“We’ve played Motherwell quite a lot this season so we know how they play,” he said. “They are physical but they’re very fair. They use their bodies and they don’t lunge in to tackles or do stupid challenges. It’s up to the striker and they play off second balls.
“We like the physical battle as well, we showed that against Hearts. We tried in the first half to keep and pass the ball but we realised the grass was like a jungle so we couldn’t really do that.
“So we got our big guys out and played it into them and they bullied the Hearts centre-halves. We’ve done it against Motherwell as well. We play it into Moussa (Dembele) and play off second balls. We’ve got that in our locker as well.”
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel