It’s safe to say that the countdown can start now.

Matt Johnson scored four more goals Tuesday night in an 8-0 win over Salisbury to give him 78 career goals, just three away from breaking the Northwestern Lehigh boys soccer school record of 80 goals that was set more than 30 years ago by Troy Everett back in 1992.

With 10 regular season games and potentially another deep postseason run, Johnson could eventually have a countdown to the 100-goal plateau for his career.

Against Salisbury, an offense that took a few games to get into high gear now has scored 48 goals in its last five games to move to 5-0-0 in league games and 8-0-0 overall.

Against Salisbury (3-3-0 Colonial, 3-4-0 overall) the offense needed very little time to get in gear. Six minutes into the game, Johnson found a loose ball in front of the net and put a shot past goalkeeper Blaine Berger for the opening goal of the game.

Then, with 27:00 left in the first half, a crossing pass from Jack Mauro was a little ahead of Johnson as he came down the middle but was in a perfect spot for Isaac Frey to sneak a shot into the back corner of the net and an early 2-0 lead.

“Everyone on this team is very skilled and I’m happy to have this team behind me,” said Johnson.

Before the first half would reach the midway point, Northwestern added two more goals, with Johnson taking a feed from Mauro that made it almost too easy for Johnson to score from about eight feet out.

The Tigers were awarded a penalty kick when the Falcons were called for a foul in the box and Jacob Van Lierop took the opportunity to deposit a shot into the upper right corner of the goal well out of the reach of Berger.

Johnson spent the past couple seasons playing up front with Josh Zellner and the two helped the team to score the most goals in the program’s history last season. Zellner graduated, but Johnson handed out some pretty high praise for Van Lierop, who has taken over as his companion up top.

“Having Jacob up top with me is like a deadly duo, like me and Josh last season,” said Johnson. “He’s a good replacement and I’m proud of him and all of the boys on this team.”

On a corner kick attempt with 5:19 left before the break, Mauro put a ball in front of the net for Johnson, but the kick wound up a little short. Berger went up to make a play on the ball, but had it glance off his fingers and Johnson reacted fast enough to head the ball into the goal.

Just two minutes later, the Tigers capped their first half scoring when Van Lierop made Berger make a dive to his left and the ball again went off his fingers and into the goal.

Johnson would pick up his fourth goal of the night in the second half off an assist from Cole Mertz.

While the Tigers returned most of their firepower from last season and have an experienced team, younger players have stepped up to contribute as they learn from the players ahead of them. Their contribution has not gone unnoticed.

“Cole Mertz is a freshman and he’s a great player and we have a lot of great sophomores and juniors,” said Johnson. “Everyone is very talented from having played with different club teams. It’s amazing to have that when you’re a senior. These kids are really talented.”

In the past week, the Tigers also downed Palisades (2-2-1, 2-2-1) 9-0 and beat Jim Thorpe (3-2-0 Schuylkill, 4-3-0 overall) in a nonleague game by a 10-2 score. Johnson and Mauro both had five goals in the two previous wins, while Frey added three goals for Northwestern.