Celtic hit the jackpot selling 'best since Larsson' who's now in PL exile

After seeing their Champions League campaign come to an abrupt end on Tuesday night, will Celtic get back to winning ways on Saturday?

The Hoops, who’ve never won a Champions League knockout phase match before in their entire history, came so close to a famous victory in Bavaria, 1-0 up on the night, pulling it back to 2-2 on aggregate, only to suffer a heartbreaking gut-punch right at the death, ousted 3-2 by Bayern Munich.

So now, attention turns to trying to secure a sixth treble in just nine seasons, facing Hibernian at Easter Road in Saturday’s early kick off, already a humongous 13 points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership.

So, while Celtic supporters and players are, largely, loving life right now, one former fans’ favourite very much is not south of the border.

Celtic’s best strikers of the last decade

Daizen Maeda‘s recent form has earned wide-spread rave reviews, with teammate Alistair Johnston describing him as “one of the most in-form players in Europe”.

That’s because the Japanese striker has scored 11 times since Boxing Day, taking his tally to 51 goals in 144 appearances for the club overall, since arriving in January 2022.

Meantime, having netted against Slovan Bratislava, Borussia Dortmund, Club Brugge and then Bayern Munich in Europe this season, Maeda became the first Celtic player since Joe Craig 47 years ago to score four or more goals in a single Champions League campaign.

How ever good Maeda may be, he’ll never exceed the legacy left by Henrik Larsson, widely considered Celtic’s best player of the modern era.

Larsson scored 224 goals in 292 games for Celtic between 1997 and 2004, scoring every 113 minutes on average, before departing for Barcelona, helping the Catalan giants win the Champions League in 2006.

Speaking on the Soccer 101 Podcast, Graham Ruthven, believes Larsson to be the best player Scottish football has seen in the post-SPL era (1998 onwards), describing him as “legitimately one of the best strikers in the world”, which, he adds would “never happen now” in the Premiership.

So, let’s compare Larsson to some of the best Celtic centre-forwards of more modern times.

Henrik Larsson vs selected Celtic striker
Player	Years at Celtic	Appearances	Goals	Assists	Minutes per goal
Henrik Larsson	1997-2004	292	224	61	113
Daizen Maeda	2022-present	144	51	25	196
Kyōgo Furuhashi	2021-2025	165	85	19	126
Moussa Dembélé	2016-2018	94	51	18	121
Odsonne Édouard	2017-2021	179	87	38	140
Leigh Griffiths	2014-2022	262	123	51	118
Gary Hooper	2010-2013	138	82	30	136
All information and statistics courtesy of Transfermarkt

As the table shows, none of the strikers who’ve come since have scored more goals, nor registered a better minutes-per-goal ratio than Larsson.

Fast forward to today, one of the strikers included in the table, currently 27 years old, once labelled the best since Larsson, isn’t enjoyed a season to remember.

Former Celtic striker in Premier League exile

Odsonne Édouard initially arrived at Celtic on loan from Paris Saint-Germain in 2017, but impressed to such an extent that the Hoops were convinced to spend a then-record £8m to secure his services permanently.

Martin O’Neill, who was manager during the glory years of the early-2000s, stated that he believed Édouard to be Celtic’s “best striker since Larsson”.

Affectionately known as French Eddy, he scored 87 goals in 179 appearances for the Hoops, before being sold to Crystal Palace for £14m in August 2021.

Well, his career in South London could not have started much better, scoring twice off the bench on his debut as the Eagles beat Tottenham 3-0 at Selhurst.

Édouard scored a steady yet unspectacular six, seven and then eight goals during his three seasons at Palace, but was deemed surplus to requirements by Oliver Glasner last summer, given Jean-Philippe Mateta‘s red-hot form and following the arrival of Eddie Nketiah.

The Frenchman was allowed to join Leicester City on loan but this move, that John Percy of the Telegraph describes as a ‘shambles’, certainly has not worked, with Édouard making just six appearances for the Foxes, totalling a mere 113 minutes, not even named on the bench for 13 of their last 14 Premier League fixtures, most-recently appearing on 10 November.

FIFA rules stipulate that a player can only play for two clubs in a single season so, given that the striker featured twice for Palace in August before making the move, he’s not able to be registered by a third club.

However, to cut a long story short, because MLS is a summer league, their equivalent of next season starts this weekend, so Atlanta United did reportedly bid £15m for Édouard in January, but this move did not come to pass, and he remains in exile, out of the picture at Leicester and unable to appear for anyone else.

Celtic supporters will be sad to see the predicament Édouard has ended up in, but this suggests they were right to cash in at £14m, given that his status has surely plummeted in recent years.