The candidates to win the Scottish Premiership golden boot in the 2023/2024 season

The Scottish Premiership kicks off on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. when the reigning champions Celtic host Ross County at home at Celtic Park. Last season it was, as usual, a two-team race between Celtic and Rangers (the last time either of these clubs did not win the Scottish Premiership was the 1984/1985 season when Aberdeen won), and those who drew the longest straw were, as mentioned, Celtic. The top scorer was also from Celtic, namely the Japanese Kyogo Furuhashi who won the golden boot with 27 goals scored.

Celtic - champions and favourites to win again season 2023/2024

Ahead of this season we can say with 99% certainty that it will be between Celtic and Rangers again. Celtic have lost their important winger Jota, but on the plus side have signed in Polish defender Maik Nawrocki and Norwegian midfield talent Odin Thiago Holm as the most important signings.

Rangers have lost their Colombian attacking star Alfredo Morelos, who after 6 years is leaving the club on a free transfer. They have also lost another striker, Antonio Mirko Colak, who has left for Parma. They have replaced their attacking losses with the strikers Danilo from Feyenoord for 6.3m euro and Cyriel Dessers from Cremonese for 5m euro.

If one would guess who will win the Scottish league this season, it leans mostly towards that Celtic will win once again. They felt very stable last season and have an armada of Japanese national team players in the team who performed very well last season. If Rangers get their offensive in order with their new attacking stars, they could very well be the winners in the end though.

Who will become the Scottish Premiership top scorer 2023/2024 ?

Last season's top scorer title winner was Celtic's Japanese Kyogo Furuhashi with 27 goals, two more than Dutchman Kevin van Veen in Motherwell, and another goal behind with 24 goals was Lawrence Shankland in Hearts. If you look at the percentage of the players team's goals, to see who was most important to his team, Kevin van Veen was absolutely outstanding as he scored 47.2% of all his team's goals. However, Van Veen has left Motherwell for a move back to the Netherlands to help Groningen back up to Eredivisie again.

Looking at the coming season, we here list five hot candidates to win the Scottish Premiership top scorer title in the 2023/2024 season.

Kyogo Furuhashi, Celtic

Kyogo Furuhashi is, as mentioned, the reigning Scottish golden boot winner and his 27 goals is the best goal tally since Leigh Griffiths won the top scorer title in 2015/2016 with 31 goals. Last season was Furuhashi's second at Celtic and it's clear that he's well-adjusted in the team at this point. He also plays in the league's best team, which is a team that scores many goals (114 league goals last season), so it's totally natural he is one of the main candidates to win this season as well.

Lawrence Shankland, Hearts

Hearts Lawrence Shankland scored 24 goals last season, including two hat-tricks. This is a scoring result that normally would be enough to win the golden boot title, but this time it was only enough for third place. It's entirely possible that the 27-year-old outdid himself last season and will find it hard to perform that good again, especially playing in a weaker club like Hearts, but he definitely deserves to be mentioned as one of the contenders.

Cyriel Dessers, Rangers

Belgian-born Nigerian Cyriel Dessers moved from Genk to Cremonese in Serie A at the start of last season, where he scored 6 goals. Dessers became the top goal scorer in the Europa Conference League 2021/2022 and the Dutch Eredivisie 2019/2020 (the interrupted Corona season), so even if he didn't score that many goals in Cremonese, he still has shown that he is a skilled scorer. Now being in the less tough Scottish league, where it is easier to score goals than in Serie A, it is not entirely unreasonable that he becomes Rangers' best goal scorer, and maybe even the best in the league.

Danilo, Rangers

Another of Rangers new signings on the forward side who is a potential winner of the top scorer title is the Brazilian Danilo. The 24-year-old was a major talent at Ajax as a youngster and did very well on loan at Twente in the 2020/2021 season as he finished fourth in the Dutch top-scoring league with 17 goals. After that he was promoted to Ajax's first team but did not really succeed there and instead went to Feyenoord on a free transfer ahead of last season. He scored 10 goals there and helped Feyenoord win the league, but apparently, he was not considered important enough for the Rotterdam club to keep him. Danilo has high potential and in a slightly easier league, playing in a team that is superior to most other teams in the league, this could be his big breakthrough season.

Daizen Maeda, Celtic

We finish off the candidate list with another Japanese and Celtic player, the 25-year-old Daizen Maeda. Maeda won the top scorer title in the Japanese J1 League in 2021 when he scored 23 goals, and last season Celtic signed him on loan from Yokohama F. Marinos. Admittedly, there were only 8 league goals scored by him last season at Celtic, but he had a very fine World Cup in Qatar for Japan, including scoring a goal against Croatia in the round of 16, and this was enough for Celtic to sign him permanently. With one Scottish league season experience, he should be stronger this season and could zscore more than eight goals, possibly even a lot more.