Celtic supporters have been treated to a great number of high-class centre-forwards at Parkhead over the years.
Right now, Daizen Maeda is the top-scorer in the squad, taking his tally to 52 goals for the club, coming in just 145 appearances, during Saturday’s surprise defeat at Easter Road against Hibernian.
Meanwhile, one of the Hoops’ best strikers of recent decades now, at the age of 34-years-old, finds himself in the footballing wilderness despite some comparisons to the great Henrik Larsson.
Henrik Larsson's Celtic legacy
According to a supporters’ vote conducted in 2002, Larsson is Celtic’s best-ever foreign player, and the numbers underline why.
The Swede scored a remarkable 224 goals in 292 games for the club between 1997 and 2004, winning four league titles, four domestic cups and reaching the UEFA Cup final of 2003.
Graham Ruthven, speaking on the Soccer 101 Podcast, described Larsson as ‘legitimately one of the best strikers in the world’, adding that a player of such talent ‘would never’ stay in Scotland for as long as he did these days, believing him to be the best player Scottish football has seen in the post-SPL era; 1998 to present day.
Given his legacy, any Celtic centre-forward who hits a bit of form is handed the “best striker since Larsson” tag, so let’s assess the club’s top-scoring centre-forward of the post-Larsson era.
2014-22
262
123
51
118
2017-21
179
87
38
140
2021-25
165
85
19
126
2010-13
138
82
30
136
2010-16
192
76
62
172
2007-10
121
59
18
159
2022-present
145
52
25
194
2016-18
94
51
18
121
His strike in Leith over the weekend took Maeda one clear of Moussa Dembélé in this ranking, still 33 goals shy of his compatriot Kyōgo, while the player with both the most goals and best minutes-per-goal ratio post-Larsson can currently be found in the footballing wilderness.
Former Celtic striker now in Australian lower leagues
As the table above outlines, Leigh Griffiths is Celtic’s highest-scorer since Larsson, netting 123 times for the club between 2014 and 2022, and his time in Glasgow was eventful, to say the least.
The striker joined the club from Wolverhampton Wanderers for a reported £1m in January 2014, scoring seven goals in just 13 Premiership appearances during his first half-season at Parkhead.
He was described by former Scotland striker Billy Dodds as a “natural finisher”, but while the goals flowed, controversies were almost as frequent.
Griffiths was charged by UEFA for ‘provoking spectators’ during a Champions League qualifying victory over Linfield in Belfast, tying a scarf to the goal post. He was also fined by the SFA for racist chanting in an Edinburgh pub, before being disciplined internally by Celtic for breaching Covid-19 lockdown rules, to name but a few.
Despite all of this, he won over the entire nation by scoring two, near-identical free-kicks for Scotland against the ‘auld enemy’ England at Hampden in June 2017.
Nevertheless, following Ange Postecoglou’s appointment as Celtic manager in the summer of 2022, Griffiths’ contract expired but, after a very brief spell at Falkirk, he has found a home down under.
Now 34-years-old, the striker plays for Mandurah City, based in Western Australia, who ply their trade in the Football West State League Division 1, part of the third tier.
Goal-scoring statistics are difficult to find, believe us when we say we tried, but we do know Griffiths is now a player-coach at the Dolphins, so it’s good to see such a talented player has found a home and is enjoying his career.
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