It is not just the amount of goals that have kept Moussa Dembele in the headlines this season, but the magnitude of the occasion when he has scored them.

The first one he netted for Celtic might well have been a portent of what was to come; the French under-21 striker was the calmest man inside the stadium when he came off the bench against Astana to dispatch a last gasp penalty kick and send Celtic into the conclusive Champions league play-off spot.

No matter the size of the stage, Dembele can switch it on.

A hat-trick in his first league meeting against Rangers and goals against Manchester City in the group stages of the Champions League confirmed the theory that the 20-year-old can keep his head when pulses are quickening.

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As the build-up to Sunday’s game against Rangers starts to intensify, the Ibrox side would have every right to feel a little anxious at the prospect of an attempted nullifying of Dembele, who has scored in all three occasions that he has played against them.

The striker, though, has insisted that he goes into any high profile game with the same mentality that he does any other.

“I do not put pressure on myself like that,” said the striker who has netted 32 goals this season. “I am always calm, relaxed. I try to focus on the game, on my own game, and not be distracted by the talk that goes on round about it.

“I look forward to every game, not games that everybody talks about. I have played football all my life, this is what I do, and I just enjoy every moment of it. I want to get better and the best way to do that is learning on the pitch. So that is all I think about, not that I must score.

“Also, it is never about one player. It is about the team. The first thing for me will always be that the team wins. Thankfully we have enjoyed a lot of that this season so far.”

Dembele has been at the forefront of that.

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The Frenchman had, by his own standards, a relatively quiet December but since returning from Celtic’s winter break in Dubai he has netted in every one of Celtic’s games bar the 1-0 win over St Johnstone at Celtic Park at the end of January.

It has been something of a purple patch with 13 goals since that Scottish Cup tie against Albion Rovers, the first game of the year for Brendan Rodgers’ side. That level of consistency appears to make a persuasive case for the fact that the player did not have his head turned with all the speculation that surrounded his future in the January transfer window.

Quietly spoken, Dembele maintains that there was never any chance that he would put his feet up in the latter half of the campaign after adding to his burgeoning reputation in the opening months of it.

“I came back ready to go again,” he said. “It felt good to have the break and some sun. But I didn’t take any notice of what was being said in the newspapers. I have said before that I am happy here and I am fully focused on scoring goals for Celtic.”

Dembele has been ably assisted this term in finding the back of the net by Scott Sinclair. The duo have netted 50 goals between them now and Sinclair’s pace has been pivotal to the manner in how Celtic pin teams back.

Certainly, the efforts of the 27-year-old former Aston Villa player have not been lost on Dembele.

“We have worked to get a good partnership and I think you can see that on the pitch,” said the striker. “But he is a top player. He is excellent.

“He seems to know how to get the ball to me in the best position. It also says a lot about his game that he scored so many goals for us.”

Celtic have moved to within just two games of winning a domestic Treble, but Dembele remains reluctant to deviate from a script that Celtic have stuck to throughout this term.

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“We try not to think like that,” he said. “There is a danger then that you lose your focus. It has worked for us to look only at the next game so that is what we are doing.

“Every game is a big one for us. It doesn’t matter who we are playing. We go out to give it our best but always we want to win.

“We are relaxed because we can trust that each other and we trust in the team. It is good to be here now but we do not want to think that it is all done because there is still lots of football to play.”