Leigh Griffiths says Celtic can hit 100 league goals this season

Leigh Griffiths celebrates making it 2-1 to Celtic at Fir Park. Picture: Craig Foy/SNS.

The forward followed up his strike in last week’s 7-0 drubbing of St Johnstone with a free-kick finish in the Fir Park success that has ensured the club a best scoring start to a league season since 1971-72 when they beat Clyde 9-1 before recording a 3-2 win over Rangers.

The 28-year-old believes there is no reason why they cannot get close to the 106 league goals netted in their ‘invincibles’ season of three years ago – a tally in sharp contrast to the 77 goals they netted in bringing up an eighth straight title last season to underpin a treble treble. “It’s possible [to break 100],” said Griffiths, who said he has some way to go to reach the desired fitness levels after a period out of the game to deal with mental health issues. “We’ve started with 12, so 88 to go. As long as we play on the front foot and create chances, we have players who can put the ball in the net.

“Every time we got in the opposition half, we looked  like scoring. Our 12 in two games shows we have scorers throughout the team in myself, Odsonne [Edouard], Ryan [Christie], Lewis [Morgan], Sincy [Scott Sinclair] coming off the bench and James Forrest.”

To that list could be added Kristoffer Ajer yesterday, who claimed Celtic’s equaliser two minutes after they went behind to a 12th-minute Liam Donnelly strike, with a lung-bursting run from right-back.

“It was like he was big Duncan Ferguson when he got in there!” said Griffiths. “You see the big man strolling up and four or five strides and he is in their penalty box! He is so fit going forward, playing right-back doesn’t bother him a jiff. It was such a composed finish.

“The sky is the limit for him. He can play centre-half, right-back and he is so composed and so good. For such a young lad too, the world is at his feet. He was different class today and didn’t put a foot wrong.”

Griffiths expressed his hope that a significant tranche of the £25m banked from the sale of Kieran Tierney would be reinvested in the team.

“You’d like to think so but that’s for the manager and the board to decide,” he said. “Looking at that team now it’s good, but can we get better?”

Meanwhile, Motherwell sought to play down an altercation between Scott Sinclair and a member of the Fir Park ground staff following the encounter yesterday.

The pair were pictured in a heated exchange, understood to have been caused by the groundsman’s demand that the Celtic winger remove himself from the pitch as he walked across it while on his phone.

Sinclair is believed to have responded angrily, leading the pair to square up before Motherwell chief executive Alan Burrows defused the situation.

The afternoon also witnessed a large section of the Celtic support indulging in voluble IRA chanting.