King Henrik - Which was better, before or after the injury

Noone can argue that King Henrik was one of the greatest Celtic players ever.
Was he better as a player before his horrific injury or after it.
To me he was improving all the time.
He is 3rd only behind Bobby Lennox and the incomparable Jimmy McGrory in the Celtic goalscoring charts.
Another 32 oals would have seen him in 2nd place.
Do you think the injury made him a stronger player and would he have went ahead of Bobby lennox.

 

he came back twice the player , seriously . something switched in him when MON came to celtic and he never looked back.

 

I agree but how good do you think he would have been if he hadn't had the injury.
Did the injury actually make him stronger when he came back.
I think he would have been 2nd top Celtic scorer.

 

That is a great question. Would be good to put the question to some players who played with him before and after. Paul lambert for instance. I think you would have to say better player after but he was playing in a far better side.

 

The fact he was only 32 behind Lennox in just 6 seasons shows the class of the man.

 

He was a model professional and a world class player before and after his injury.

There is no question that the man henrik was that the injury made him even stronger than he was but I'm not sure it changed him into an even better player. I think great management and an exceptional team and partnership upfront made henrik an even better player..

The best..

 

This. I've never seen anything like it. He recovered right before the end of the season and must have worked his hole off all summer. Was a far superior player.

 

After. Henrik got better as he got older, so it would naturally be after the injury.

 

I think his best season for Celtic was the 1998-99 season when Dr Jo was manager. He scored more goals in the treble winning season but for all round play I thought 98-99 was him at his absolute peak.

As an overall body of work I would say he was a better player after the injury though.

 

Newco Larsson was better.

 

OH NO YOU DIDN'T.

 

Prefer pre-injury Larsson. He seemed better, maybe his dreadlocks made him look younger, swifter.

 

I missed the dreadlocks

 

Henrik was a super player for us both before and after his injury . He appeared better as time went on because our management and players had more and more respect for him and improved in the way they played for him and quality of ball they played to him .
Just like last season when Lennon had the team set up to get the best out of Commons , Kris repaid with 32 goals . This year the team isn't set up for Commons and he will probably not get 12 goals .

 

Can't argue against any of that. Spot on assessment.

 

I think he'd have been great regardless.

Before he broke his leg he scored 32 goals in the last 29 games of the season before and 12 goals in 12 games that season until injury, so had 44 goals in his last 41 games before he broke his leg.

The leg break was probably a blessing in disguise though, as it meant Barnes got sacked, meant we got O'Neill and also stopped Larsson from probably scoring over a goal a game and leaving in 2001 or 2002.

 

Larsson's injury worked out pretty swell, we might not have got short of Barnes, perhaps never gotten MON, to seville etc.

 

The treble season was his best . He was the best striker in the UK that year , and i mean that . Some of the link up with Sutton was just a joy to watch , and his finishing was unbelievably clinical .