CELTIC striker Leigh Griffiths has a plan to improve on his spectacular season – bulk up.
The newly-crowned PFA Scotland player of the year is on 39 goals for the campaign ahead of Celtic’s home game against Aberdeen on Sunday, when a point will officially crown them Ladbrokes Premiership champions.
With a suspension looming on the final day against Motherwell, Griffiths has two matches to hit the 40-mark and he appreciates that his campaign will be difficult to follow up. And he is not going to leave it to chance.
“There are still aspects of my game I can improve,” the 25-year-old said. “You can always improve, you can’t just rest on what you have been doing so far.
“Next season I will be looking to improve my game, I will be stronger, more physical, trying to hold defenders off, and keep scoring goals.
“The fitness guys give you a programme to work on. We are not going to get a lot of time off, especially with the Scotland games coming up as well.
“But for the time I’m going to get off, I will be in the gym a lot. I will be going out running and I’ll be coming back fit.”
Griffiths feels he has to increase his upper body strength in order to wrest the Scotland number nine jersey from Steven Fletcher.
“I have to because I’m not the tallest,” the former Livingston, Dundee, Wolves and Hibernian player said. “I’ve got a good spring on me, but I’m not like Fletcher or Chris Martin who have got a bit of height about them.
“I’m a small guy who will put himself about but I’ve not got that height so I need to be stronger and hold defenders off.”
Griffiths received his PFA Scotland award from Gordon Strachan on Sunday night but he resisted the urge to lobby the Scotland boss for a start in the upcoming friendlies against Italy and France.
The forward, who only played 15 minutes of Scotland’s failed Euro 2016 qualifying campaign, said: “I did that a couple of years ago when I won the sports writers’ award.
“He was a guest at the top table and I managed to win that award and I gave him a little bit for not picking me beforehand. And I managed to get my debut a couple of weeks later when we played Croatia.
“But I’m just happy to be back in the squad now, and if I can get a start I’ll be buzzing, and if not I’ll sit on the bench and wait my turn. We have a lot of good strikers that are all vying for than one place.”
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