Leigh Griffiths: Dundee striker faces action after booting flare at rival fans | OneFootball

Scotland striker Leigh Griffiths completely lost his head during Dundee's 2-0 defeat to St. Johnstone in the Premier Sports Cup on Wednesday evening - and faces both police and SFA investigations after being filmed kicking a flare into the crowd.

The 31-year-old frontman recently joined Dundee on a season-long loan from Celtic but has found life tough since arriving at Dens Park, failing to score since moving the move.

Griffiths, who has 123 goals in 261 appearances for his parent club, once again struggled for form against St. Johnstone - and was the target of plenty of barracking from the visiting supporters throughout the night.

Second-half goals from Shaun Rooney and Ali Crawford were enough to see St. Johnstone through to the last-four of the competition. However, it is Griffiths' conduct during the match that the game will be most remembered for.

In scary scenes shared on social media, Griffiths was captured booting a flare that had been thrown on to to the pitch back into the stand where St. Johnstone's fans were gathered.

You can see the disturbing footage below.

While the flare should never have been thrown towards the playing surface in the first place, Griffiths response was the furthest thing from appropriate - and major repercussions are likely to follow. Thankfully, there are no reports of anyone having been hurt in the incident.

Quiz: The ultimate 2021/22 Champions League quiz - a question on each club

1 of 32

In 2011, Man City played which club in their first ever CL game?

Napoli Villarreal Bayern Munich Wolfsburg

In a statement released by Dundee on Thursday morning, the player himself insisted that he simply wanted to remove the flare as quickly as possible to allow the game to resume following a St. Johnstone goal.

"It was regrettable that the pyrotechnic ended up back in the stand as my intention was just to remove it from the pitch," stated Griffiths.

"Having just lost a goal I was eager to get the match restarted as quickly as possible and I would like to apologise for any distress caused by this action."

Only Griffiths will know if this was genuinely his reason for behaving as he did. However, he is sure to have to explain the sequence of events several times over to authorities before they bring their investigations into the matter to a close.