“Getting into the top 20 scorers at Celtic, is a massive achievement,” Leigh Griffiths

Leigh Griffiths might be Scotland’s best tomorrow night as Steve Clarke’s underdogs look to shock Serbia and win a place at the next summer’s delayed Euros. Late strikes coming from the bench have been the Celtic Number 9’s recent trademark and that was why Chris Sutton aimed his guns at Griffiths last week and he scored for the third time in a few weeks after coming off the bench.

Sutton rates Griffiths highly as a goalscorer but questions his professionalism in failing to be fit enough to start. At the start of the year, before the pandemic brought the season to a premature conclusion, Griffiths and his striking partner Odsonne Edouard were flying and their goals were driving Celtic to the title. Indeed on the final game before lockdown Celtic thrashed St Mirren 5-0 and Griffiths grabbed himself the match ball after netting a hat-trick.

Indeed his recent return to goalscoring form has resulted in Griffiths moving into the Top 20 of the all-time Celtic goal scorers and he’s in there with most of the club’s legends.

Speaking to the new edition of Celtic View, the goalscorer sees the recent run of goals as being just the start as he looks to kick on and rediscover his early 2020 form. “You always want to be part of things and as long as I can keep getting game time then my match sharpness will come back as quickly as it went away.

“I just want to keep getting minutes on the pitch and keep working hard and keep those numbers up. Getting that goal, getting into the top 20 scorers at Celtic, is a massive achievement for myself. Now, it’s just about trying to kick on and perhaps see how many places I can climb up that list.”

Griffiths is looking forward to yet another cup final next month when Celtic take on Hearts in the delayed 2020 Scottish Cup Final. Winning that will mean that this team will have delivered the Quadruple Treble, something we’ll never see again. But the main focus has to be the league and winning Ten-in-a-Row and it could be a significant factor for Celtic achieving that is a goalscoring Leigh Griffiths who is fit enough to be in the team. It will also shut up big Sutton!

“As for the prospect of another treble? Listen, we know what’s at stake. We’re one game away from making history in the Scottish Cup. We’re under no illusions that the Hearts squad won’t be fired up for it, they’ll be raring to go and wanting to stop us, but we just need to bring our A-game, make sure everyone is on-point and fired up.

“We want to go and win that trophy for the fourth time on the bounce, and what better way to do that than to win a quadruple treble?

“We normally have the League Cup final in December, which we’ve reached for the past few years in a row. This year, while the structure has changed, it feels like we’re sort of substituting that this time around. It’s another game that we want to go and win, whether it’s a cup final or not.

“It’s five days before Christmas and what a way to celebrate Christmas early than with a Scottish Cup winner’s medal. That said, we’ve got plenty of big games between now and then, and we’re focused on trying to win every one of those.”