He just needs a goal.� It is the plaintive cry used in defence of strikers experiencing a goal drought. The theory is that once the striker ends his penalty box famine, then the floodgates will open and he will drown in a deluge of goals.

He just needs a goal." It is the plaintive cry used in defence of strikers experiencing a goal drought. The theory is that once the striker ends his penalty box famine, then the floodgates will open and he will drown in a deluge of goals. There is substantial evidence to back up this school of thought, but it can also be misleading.

Kenny Miller is one example in which the theory does not apply. The Rangers striker often goes weeks and months without scoring.

"He just needs a goal," his sympathisers plead. Then he will score. And more weeks and months will pass without him troubling the back of the net again. There is a general acceptance that Miller is not, and never will be, a prolific goal-scorer.

This is backed up by stats. In ten seasons, Miller has only scored 20 or more goals, for club and country combined, on two occasions. He has always been a sporadic plunderer who enjoys small purple patches in front of goal.

In his first spell at Rangers at the start of the decade, Miller came out the goal-scoring traps like a greyhound, but was on his hands and knees by the turn of the year.

In that 2000-01 season, he scored nine goals in six games during a three-week period, including the "famous five" against St Mirren on November 4. After that initial splurge, he managed just one in 22 games thereafter. It set the template for the rest of his career.

However, if Miller is a fitful performer, then there is also enough evidence to suggest that he revels on the big stage. When he does score, he tends to do so in big games.

Miller's impressive double in last month's Old Firm game, which Rangers won 4-2, encapsulated so much about him. There was an inevitability about his match-winning interventions.

Miller had failed to open his goal account for the Ibrox side against lesser opposition, but it came as no surprise that he should do so against his former club in the biggest game of the season to date.

Similarly, in the 2006-07 season, he took nine games to finally open his account for Celtic. When he did so, unsurprisingly, it was against former club Rangers in a 2-0 victory.

Then, three days later he slotted the decisive penalty against FC Copenhagen in the Champions League. No goals in the next three games was then followed by a memorable double against Benfica in the Champions League. Such is the Miller enigma.

During his five-year spell at Wolves, he scored in successive games against Manchester United and then Liverpool - the first a winner and the second an equaliser - in the Molineux club's first season back in the Premiership. The strike against Liverpool, on January 21, 2004, proved to be his last of the season.

The trend has also been repeated in international football. In September 2005, he turned in arguably his best performance in a Scotland shirt in a 1-1 draw with Italy at Hampden. As well as scoring the opening goal, Miller led the line superbly and his performance that day persuaded Gordon Strachan to bring him to Celtic the following summer.

Miller's subsequent move to Rangers this year, via Derby County, was greeted with hostility by a section of the Rangers support, but it has always been about Walter Smith's expectations of the player.

Smith managed Miller with Scotland and has followed his career closely for the last decade. If anyone knows what Miller is, and is not capable of, it is the Rangers manager. Against Hibernian, another of his former clubs, on Sunday, he scored an excellent double alongside Jean-Claude Darcheville in attack.

There is a defiant streak in Miller that sees him flourish against former clubs, and in the face of adversity. "If we ever draw Derby County in a competition he will, obviously, be the man to play," chuckled Smith. "We've got a lot of strikers and we just have to pick and choose who is best depending on the opposition. I felt it was the best pairing today and it worked out."

Smith does not expect M