Fenlon won’t give up hope on Leigh Griffiths

PAT Fenlon insists Hibs will do all they can to hold on to Leigh Griffiths, despite Wolves’ intention of taking up a one-year option on the striker’s contract.

Griffiths signed a two-and-a-half-year contract with Wolves at the beginning of 2011 but has yet to make a competitive start for the Championship club. His move on loan to Hibs was initially for five months from that August, but has since been extended three times.

This week, however, Wolves manager Dean Saunders said the Championship club would take up their one-year option on griffiths’ contract, apparently ending Hibs’ hopes of signing the player as a free agent.

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“Wolves have not been in touch and it’s not something they need to do,” Fenlon said yesterday. “He’s their player and if he goes back is between Wolves and Leigh, I don’t have any control over it. I think Leigh has been tremendous for us, and between now and the end of the season has a big part to play. We’ve just got to focus on that rather than worry what will happen at the end of it.

“I think Leigh has flourished here. He he loves playing for the club, so if in the long run he goes back and he does well there next season, great. We’ve just got to move on like he’s got to move on in his careeer as well.”

Fenlon’s best hope of signing Griffiths is if Wolves take up the one-year option then immediately try to sell him. That could start a bidding war which Hibs might be quickly priced out of, but the manager said they would still do what they could.

“We’ve said that from the start. We’ll continue to do that, because we know that’s what we want and and obviously what the suporters want.”

Griffiths has said in the past that he would happily play for Hibs for the rest of his career, and Fenlon agreed that his joining Wolves might have been a mistake. “That happens in football. You sign contracts and maybe come the end of them you think ‘Why did I do that?’ It can work for you and against you at times,” he said.

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