FRANK McGARVEY was a top striker himself and knows what it takes to star in a Celtic team and grab some of the attention while playing alongside a younger teammate who seems destined to go to the very top.

Anyone who watched Charlie Nicholas break into that exciting Celtic team in the early 1980s will appreciate that we were very lucky indeed at that time to have McGarvey up-front alongside Nicholas and of course George McCluskey, with Billy McNeill able to choose two from three with the other on the bench.

So it’s interesting to hear McGarvey’s thoughts on Leigh Griffiths who is the ‘veteran’ striker at Celtic in comparison to the young, exciting talent that is Odsonne Edouard. And like ‘Champagne Charlie’ the current darling of the Celtic support, ‘French Eddie’ is also destined to reach the top.

Nicholas probably left too soon. He should have followed the Kenny Dalglish model and achieve all that he felt he could in Scotland before heading to England. And when you look back to English football in the 1980s you would think that Liverpool would have been the better option for the talent Celtic striker rather than Arsenal.

Roll forward to the present and Arsenal are the club reported to be sniffing around Odsonne Edouard, maybe hoping that the coronavirus shake-up of the game will net them a bargain from Celtic, who prudently might want to sell to keep the books balanced. That incidentally could happen, but if we get behind the club and make sure season tickets are sold then it can be avoided.

Celtic will leave insolvency worries elsewhere in Scottish football and we can all sit back and watch that playing out over the next few months, popcorn served up with jelly and ice-cream Aye Ready.

McGarvey appreciates the similarities between Nicholas and Edouard and is a big fan of the current Celtic goalscorer. “He reminds me of Charlie Nicholas,” McGarvey said and like what happened in the summer of 1983, he reckons that there could be heartache around the corner for Celtic supporters.

“I do think that someone will come in this summer and put £20million on the table for him,” Frank said, as reported by Glasgow Times. “You can’t blame Celtic for taking it, especially in the current climate. I’ll be sorry to see him go because I think he is an outstanding footballer. His temperament and his ability have been there for everyone to see.”

McGarvey maybe seems something of himself in Leigh Griffiths and reckons that he can continue to write plenty of additional chapters in his own Celtic story over the next three or four years.

“I think he has had a lot of time to think,” McGarvey said, talking about Leigh Griffiths and the personal issues he’s had to deal with, added of course by the coronavirus lay-off that has affected all players.

“I think now the onus is on Leigh to go and give a wee bit of payback. If he goes back to training in the right frame of mind with the thought in his head that he is hitting the ground running then he has the chance to pick up where he has left off. But it is up to him to do the right things.”

McGarvey is clearly a huge fan of Griffiths as a striker. “He has a natural gift that has helped him and he has had other issues that have maybe held him back but he has had a lot of help.

“It is up to him now if he can continue where he has left off. You can only get so much help and the rest has to be up to you.

“Footballers care about money, of course they do. Where else do you go and earn the kind of salary that Griffiths is getting now at Celtic anywhere else? That is important.

“I think now it is up to him where he goes. He is in a small band of players who have scored more than 100 goals for Celtic so he has already shown what he can do. And those two free-kicks that he scored against England in a game at the very top level of football are iconic goals now.

“He has a gift and at just 29 he is still in the prime years of his career. If he does things properly in terms of training and eating and recovering then he has the ability to play for at least another three or four years at the top level.

“Deep within himself I suspect Leigh will always have known that he could come back and score goals. You are born with that. It is instinctive. He will then have taken confidence, though, from the goals going in and feeling his physical fitness improve and his conditioning return. I am sure he would have finished the season fairly strongly.

“But the thing with the really great strikers is that you are not scoring goals in pockets or doing it for a few months here and there but you are consistent in terms of doing it week after week and season after season.

“He should still have a lot of football in him and now it is about what he wants for himself. He has the capability it is just making sure that he has everything else tuned towards playing football.”

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