Leigh Griffiths has scored 100 goals for Celtic but if he knuckles down now he can score another 100.

He made the call last week to remove himself from the international fray, citing a feeling that he was not entirely fit.

My own feeling is that Alex McLeish was a bit naïve in the whole affair; I suspect he told Leigh that Steven Naismith would start against Israel and as a result Leigh has decided that he wasn’t going away to sit on the bench. In fairness, I don’t know how I would have reacted to something like that myself.

But now that he has had this time off to focus on his well being then I think we need to see him chomping at the bit now for Celtic to go and get right back on it.

I don’t think he has a case to answer or a point to make to McLeish and Scotland. I think he made his point long ago.

And the only people he has anything to prove to are himself and Brendan Rodgers. Let’s see the swagger that he had on the pitch again.

Glasgow Times:
John Hartson

We all know that Leigh will score goals. He is a natural finisher and an instinctive finisher but there is no secret on what he has to work on. He needs to hold the ball up, link up play, bring other into play and basically work his baskside off whenever he is on the pitch.

He will always score goals. But if he is doing the other stuff in tandem with that then he becomes impossible to leave out – for either Celtic or Scotland.

I keep hearing that Odsonne Edouard is a work in progress but I also think we need to see a little bit more from him too. I have no doubt that he has the raw talent to go and be a top player and at 20, he is still learning the ropes.

But he has had a relatively quiet start to the season. There will be more to come from him and it is difficult when you are playing with a pretty big pricetag around your neck but I’d like to see Edouard in and about it a bit more over these next few months.

There is a month between now and the next international break and by the time it rolls around I think you’d expect to be seeing Celtic back at the top of the table.

They left off for the break on the back of arguably one of their best performances of the season with the 6-0 defeat of St Johnstone and what they need now is to replicate that week in, week out.

Consistency has eluded Celtic in this opening stretch of the campaign and this is where they need to look to recover some of it. We need to see the ruthlessness of the previous two seasons and have teams dreading playing Celtic.

Not that you’d expect Neil Lennon to fall into that category.

Neil will be working on his Hibs players all week, telling them what they need to do to go and get a result at Celtic Park. He’ll expect them to be brave against Celtic and make sure they don’t wilt in the atmosphere in Glasgow.

But this is massive for Celtic. It is a huge game and you’d expect that it will be relatively open too because Neil has got Hibs playing a vibrant and attacking style of play. They’ll feel as though they have very little to lose by going and giving a positive account of themselves against Celtic.

This is where Celtic have to show that they can step it up a gear. There are some massive games ahead this month and they really need to start working towards building up a decent bit of momentum because that is what breeds confidence.

Once you get that then you expect to win every game you go into.

The Europa League game against Leipzig will be massive if Celtic are to harbour ambitions of getting out of the group and into the knockout stage after Christmas. You need to be going into that game on the back of a decent domestic showing.

They also need to find way to be stubborn to beat and difficult to score against. The sloppy goals that have undone them so far in terms of their European performances are frustrating because they are so avoidable.

Building up a couple of clean sheets at least gives you confidence heading into the Europa League games, although I suspect Hibs will do their best to test that this Saturday.