I caught only a little of the Scottish football highlights show on TV last night, but it was good to see Leigh Griffiths in the studio, getting a little of the credit he deserves for the way he’s been playing of late.
The media’s belated conversion to hailing this excellent player is both welcome and wholly expected; the better Griffiths gets the better our national team will fare, because he’s the natural finisher we’ve been hoping for these last few years.
Celtic will be the main beneficiaries of course, as long as we build a team to support his huge talents and he sees out that contract and stays for years to come.
He’s on 51 goals now.
Regular readers know I’ve said he’ll be the next Celtic player to hit 100 goals in the Hoops.
I actually want to revise that; Kris Commons will get there ahead of him, an awesome achievement from a midfielder and one that ought to make us all marvel at his contribution to the cause since he signed.
It’s been astonishing.
He needs just nine goals to scale that height; I think he’ll have them by the seasons end.
But Leigh will reach the 100, and he will surpass that number with ease.
The milestone after that is getting into our top ten scorers of all time – he needs 173 to knock the majestic King Kenny off of that list – which seems a feat beyond him except … Leigh has hit 51 in only 83 games, 60 as a starter, and it’s that statistic which the TV highlighted last night.
In terms of goals per starts, Griffiths has the record as the fastest player in our history to reach that magic number.
If he stays at Celtic for the next five season, taking his number of appearances into the hundreds, there’s no reason he can’t accomplish that grander goal.
I found the stats on goals to starts intriguing.
There are players on the list I’d not have expect to see, and a few I thought had better records than they do.
For example, it took Henrik what I’d have said was an improbable 82 starting line-up’s to score 50 goals, something Leigh almost surpassed on his total goals to games ratio including appearances from the bench.
That bears some thinking about in terms of how good the young Scottish striker might prove to be for us.
Henrik himself, in just seven seasons, amassed 242 goals, putting him third on the list of our top scorers ever, which should remind us, again, what a phenomenal footballer we had here during that time.
But he didn’t hit the 50 as fast as Griffiths.
Nowhere near it.
The closest anyone’s come to him was Charlie Nicholas, one of the best natural finishers Scottish football ever produced.
He previously held the record Leigh has just broken, taking only 62 starting games – two more than Leigh – to hit 50.
His talents were wonderful, and he’s got the accolade of being one of the 100 Goals players, of whom there are less than 30 in our whole history, but Griffiths has managed to eclipse him already and ought to have Nicholas’ goal haul firmly in his sights.
Next on the list, a name who surprised me, was Pierre Van Hooijdonk, another guy who I remembered as being a decent striker but who I had wholly underestimated as a finisher.
The manner with which he left Celtic has, naturally, soured a lot of our memories of him and I honestly believe that his pursuit of money instead of improvement as a player is why he wasn’t a legend. In the ten years after he left Celtic Park he played for six different teams, averaging about 18 months at each.
This includes Feyenoord who he played for twice, and where he is feted in the way he would eventually have been at Parkhead.
Big John Hartson is on the list next, another of the 100 Goal Club to which Griffiths aspires, and a player I simply loved in the Hoops.
I still say that he had been available for the UEFA Cup Final in Seville that no amount of Mourinho inspired rolling around would have spared Porto; we’d have taken that trophy home and parked it alongside the Champions Cup.
It took Big Bad John 72 matches to reach the landmark.
Brian McClair is behind Hartson, a player I remember growing up, one basically nicked from us for a paltry transfer fee that bellied his massive talents and striking prowess.
Griffiths reached the landmark comfortably in front of him, as he, like Hartson, did it in 72.
Behind them is Hoops, and I loved Gary Hooper and he was odds on to hit the 100 mark when we decided to sell him.
I was surprised to learn that he actually took 81 starts to reach the 50 goal mark.
He scored important ones, though, including in Europe and against Rangers.
Griffiths will never do the latter in a Celtic shirt, but I expect him to become a Sevco Skelper in due course.
He already has one goal against them … and many more to come.
Andy Walker equalled Hoops record, and the former footballer and now washed up hack did it one game quicker than the King of Kings himself, which is about the only thing he’ll ever better the Super Swede at unless there’s an award for talking guff which no-one has told me about.
(My nomination form will be in the post ASAP.)
Scott McDonald is last on the list, and it took him 89 matches to hit the 50, and I read recently of his deep regrets at not staying at Celtic long enough to join the 100 Club too, and I would have loved that as he was a favourite of mine in spite of my initial opposition to his signing on the grounds of his having scored the goals that made Black Sunday such an appalling memory.
Griffiths has beaten them all; some great, some good, and another barely worth a mention.
I remember watching all these guys play, but Henrik apart I rate Griffiths as the best natural finisher of the lot of them.
He was typically modest this weekend, saying he does not belong in such exalted company, and this impresses me all the more, not just for the maturity and humility it shows but because it’s clear to everyone who’s watched him lately that if he’s at Celtic Park long enough – and his current contract last until 2020 – then he will most definitely prove what I already suspect; that he does belong in that bracket, that he is as good as those guys and that he will, one day, merit the label “Celtic legend.”
Being an icon is another step again … but even that might prove to be within his reach.
The young man from Edinburgh has a long way to go, but he’s only 25 and he’s come a long way already.
His career total of 162 goals in 310 games would, if he’d been at Celtic Park for that whole time, have already put him within touching distance of that top ten place … and his best years are still all laid out in front of him.