WITH Leigh Griffiths, what you see, is what you get. It doesn’t always work in his favour, particularly when it comes to staying in the good graces of his manager, Brendan Rodgers.

But for teammate Ryan Christie, it is an essential part of the make-up that makes him the player he most wants to learn from as he tries to make his own impact up front for Celtic.

The relationship between Griffiths and Rodgers has been a complicated one over the years, but for Christie, the value of Griffiths to Celtic is simple to define. No matter what he is going through away from the field, or even if things don’t seem to be going his way on the field, he will score goals.

“To be fair to Griff he wears his heart on his sleeve and sometimes people say that’s a bad thing, but I don’t think it is,” said Christie. “You see the other night [against St Johnstone] when he misses a few chances, he’s still confident and the way he manages to keep that self-confidence to continue scoring goals is quite incredible at a club like Celtic where the pressure is so high to keep producing.

“It comes down to confidence with Leigh. He’s so confident when he gets the chance he will score goals. Maybe other parts of the game aren’t going well during games, but you are always confident he’s going to find the back of the net.

“He’s a great player to have in our squad, to be able to rely upon to keep popping up with goals. It’s a great thing to have so, yes, he’s someone I can learn from.

“It’s probably more in games that I learn from him. You watch him and his movement when the ball’s in different areas and he has this instinct to just not move and it can end up paying off.

“It’s that instinctiveness that strikers need. He’s got it and hopefully I can get some of it too.”

Christie is a dedicated and hard-working young player, but like Griffiths, he isn’t cut from the same bland cloth that many modern-day players seem to be.

He understands though why some players can seem robotic given the pressures of the game at the top level, and admits it is a challenge sometimes to remain in touch with that simple love of the game when so much is riding on your performance.

“There’s a big side of football that’s mental,” he said. “You have to deal with a lot of stuff that people on the outside looking in don’t see. The pressures of having to perform week-in, week-out and still have that enjoyment, that real passion to go out on a Saturday and enjoy your football instead of being really nervous and panicking about making a mistake or just hoping you’re going to get a result.

“It can be easy to slip into that way of thinking, that nervousness, when there is so much riding on games these days and it’s such a highly-watched sport. But it’s a pressure you have to deal with. Sink or swim.”

It is getting towards sink or swim time too for Christie’s Celtic career with his contract up in the summer.

“I’m part of the squad, now it’s up to me to really add something to it,” he said.