Celtic’s centre-forwards, Kyogo Furuhashi and Adam Idah, have not enjoyed the most prolific start to the 2024/25 campaign in the Scottish Premiership.
Kyogo has been the go-to number nine for Brendan Rodgers, starting eight of the 11 league matches, and has missed a whopping 12 ‘big chances’ to only score four goals.
Meanwhile, Idah has played a back-up role and contributed with two goals and four ‘big chances’ missed in eight appearances, four of which came as a starter.
The issue for a lot of Celtic centre-forwards is that it is incredibly difficult to live up to Henrik Larsson’s legacy at Parkhead, as the greatest striker in the club’s modern history.
The Sweden international joined the Scottish giants from Feyenoord on a permanent deal in the summer of 1997 and had a decent, but not spectacular, debut season.
Larsson scored 11 goals in 23 games in the Premiership in his first year with the Hoops, before a return of 12 goals in 19 league outings the following term.
He then went on a run of four successive seasons with 26 goals or more in the top-flight for the Hoops, which helped him to finish his career in Glasgow with 147 goals in 186 league matches.
Larsson, who scored 220 goals in 287 games for Celtic in all competitions, was an incredibly prolific goalscorer who set the bar high for any future number nines at the club to live up to.
The Hoops did once have a striker on loan, however, who appeared to have the potential to be their next Henrik Larsson in the making – John Guidetti.
John Guidetti’s Celtic potential
In the summer of 2014, Celtic swooped to sign another Swedish forward, who had also played for Feyenoord, on loan from Premier League giants Manchester City, after he had a few major injury issues.
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Guidetti had missed 91 games through a knee injury between April 2012 and January 2013 and was still working to get back to full fitness by the time he moved to Celtic.
He had, however, scored a stunning 20 goals in 23 games for Feyenoord on loan in the 2011/12 campaign, and racked up 20 goals in 29 games for Manchester City’s reserve side at academy level.
These statistics suggest that the potential was there for him to be a prolific scorer, at a similar rate of goals to Larsson, for Celtic if he could recapture his best form.
Guidetti showed plenty of signs of promise during the 2014/15 season with the Hoops. The Swedish star produced 15 goals and ten assists in 23 starts, and 35 appearances in total, across all competitions.
However, Celtic were unable to tie him down to a permanent deal beyond that term, and the striker later revealed that it was because he did not want to stay. Guidetti said that he preferred playing in ‘big’ games and was unimpressed by ‘Ross County away’, as well as the lack of celebration after winning the Premiership that year.
The Scottish Sun described his form for Celtic as ‘prolific’ but the forward refused to see what he could achieve over five or six years at Parkhead, as his compatriot Larsson did.
Guidetti then failed to consistently perform in the ‘big’ games in Spain. In seven seasons in LaLiga with Celta Vigo and Alaves, he failed to score more than seven goals in a single term.
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The striker turned down the chance to go on and become a legend at Parkhead to struggle to make a name for himself in Spain, and he now plays for AIK in Sweden at the age of 32.
