Leigh Griffiths will pick up the Scottish Football Writers Association player of the year award for the second time on Sunday night, joining a select band of players to have done so. Rangers trio John Greig, Sandy Jardine and Brian Laudrup as well as Griffiths’s teammate Craig Gordon and Celtic legend Henrik Larsson are the heady company to which he now belongs.

By that time, he may well have broken the 40-goal mark for the season, becoming the first player since that man Larsson to do so. And yet, despite the parallels that Griffiths’s remarkable goalscoring form continues to draw with the record of the super Swede, any comparison between the pair as footballing equals still draws scoffs and incredulity.

Perhaps it is time to ask why that is the case, when his goalscoring record undoubtedly deserves respect.

It could indeed be argued that in terms of how the first two years of his Celtic career have gone, that Griffiths is slightly ahead of where Larsson was at a similar juncture of his time at Celtic Park. Larsson took a while to find his feet, and it wasn’t until his third season in Scotland that he really came of age in terms of establishing himself as the main striker in the Celtic side and as a player capable of consistently breaking the 30-goal mark. Griffiths had similarly slow start to his Celtic career, which stalled further when Ronny Deila arrived, but since applying himself to a fitness regime and keeping his head down away from the pitch, Griffiths has established himself as by far and away the best striker in the country. The Norwegian deserves some credit for the turnaround in Griffiths, but it is the player’s single-mindedness and renewed focus that has been the biggest factor behind his stunning form.

There seems to be a snobbishness that applies to apportioning credit where it is due to Griffiths. Is it the infamous Scottish cringe, where a player is automatically incapable of being bracketed as top-class simply because he is Scottish? Are we so down on our game that any remarkable feat of goalscoring is automatically put down to the poor standard of opposition rather than the ability of the striker? Perhaps. More than once I have discussed Griffiths with friends or even other sports journalists, only to be met with the response “Aye, but who against?” With the greatest of respect, were Larsson’s goals against the likes of Dunfermline and Livingston harder to come by than Griffiths’s strikes against St Johnstone or Motherwell these days?

This isn’t intended to say that Griffiths has achieved anything like Larsson did yet, particularly when it comes to proving his credentials against European opposition and at international level. Griffiths after all has only scored twice for Celtic in Europe – against Stjarnan and Fenerbahce – while he has yet to score for his country in his seven caps so far. So Griffiths has a long way to go, but there seems to be a dismissal of the notion that he could progress along similar lines to Larsson, despite only being 25 and showing signs of improvement all the time. It seems strange to me that we have a striker of this calibre in our country, and yet for the most part we talk his achievements down.

His fellow professionals have recognised that he is the best player in the country with the PFA Scotland player of the year accolade, and now the football writers have followed suit. Perhaps it is time we all got excited about this free-scoring talent in our midst, particularly as he finally seems to be focusing all of his energies on improving as a player, and proving himself for both club and country.

Griffiths may have an image problem, still seen as the daft laddie from Leith who likes a pint and a dubious sing-song before the Edinburgh derby, but he has earned the right to shake that tag off and be taken seriously as a footballer.

Can Griffiths be compared to Larsson at the moment? Of course not. Larsson went on to prove that he was a world-class footballer for Barcelona and Manchester United, as well as on the international stage. But could he be in the future? Who knows? But he is the closest thing we’ve got to a genuine goalscoring phenomenon, and is hell-bent on improving his game all the time. We should be excited about that. His record deserves our respect.