Celtic follow up their 2-0 SPFL win against Kilmarnock by taking on the same opponent at Hampden Park in a League Cup semi-final.
I’m not a great fan of playing the same team consecutively. I remember a run of four matches versus Dundee United under Ronnie Deila. The games become increasingly fractious and familiarity started to breed contempt. The football can become secondary therefore introducing unwanted variance.
Chronic Killie
On the face of it, there are few risks for Celtic from this opponent based on the league encounter.
Celtic racked up 3.4 xG to only 0.03 by Kilmarnock. There was a header across goal in the second half that some vendors counted as a shot but as it came from a throw in I thought it was merely a headed ball across the goal. In any event, one or two shots in 90 minutes is pretty poor going.
With 78% possession and 24 shots to one, none of the stats should fill Celtic with fear playing the same opponent again.
No opponent has completed less than Kilmarnock’s 99 passes and 242 total possession events is also the lowest of the season.
They are also the second opponent to fail to have at least one shot on target during the game after Aberdeen.
The Sofascore attacking momentum bar tells a tale:
But still, Cup, “anything can happen”, Collum, Aitken and so on.
Extreme Left-Wing Tendencies
A few bits and pieces to be wary of for sure.
Celtic have, since at least Brendan Rodger’s time, been a very left sided dominant team. I mean this in terms of where the ball spends most time and which side the attack comes down.
In Rodger’s time I thought this largely influenced by Kieran Tierney being an attacking full back on one side versus Mikael Lustig being on the right and tending to tuck into a back three on occasion.
It has persisted post Tierney and it may be because Celtic’s most ball hungry player, captain Callum McGregor is prone to drift to the left predominantly as his 21/22 heat map shows:
When Celtic kick off McGregor nearly always goes left. Maybe it sets a psychological tone?
I don’t know but against Kilmarnock on Saturday Celtic were hugely unbalanced in their attacking especially in the first half.
The ball was relentlessly recycled around left sided centre back Carl Starfelt, left back Alex Bernabei and left sided number eight Reo Hatate. Daizan Maeda on the left wing even had more touches than he normally does – 51 possession events his second highest of the season (53 versus Hibernian recently being the most).
This has risk as Bernabei and Hatate are the two most likely to turn the ball over – potential for this to be a “toxic combination” against a better counter attacking team. And Starfelt in particular is not a “creative” passer. He is effective getting past the initial forward press but not completing passes deep into opposition territory. He will also give up one or two unforced turnover passes each and every game.
Bernabei had the lowest pass completion of the defenders (86%) but on the upside there were 14 pack passes taking opponents out the game. And of course, the one glorious pass that took out the whole Kilmarnock team to put Maeda in for a cross to assist the opening goal.
Hatate only completed nine pack passes and had the lowest pass completion of the midfielders at 79%. He was excellent, however, in finding pockets of space and trying to find holes in the Kilmarnock rear-guard. His quick cross into Kyogo Furuhashi led to the second goal (and, yes, that is an assist in my book).
Between them they turned over nine times – meaning when they lost the ball, on nine occasions Celtic players were now wrong side of the ball as a result. These are counter attack opportunities.
So, you can argue the risk/reward was in Celtic’s favour and, meh, it was only Kilmarnock. Fine.
The right side was barely used which was unusual as Jota is something of a ball magnet for a winger. New right back Alistair Johnston mitigated by looking all over the park for work, often popping up on the left wing.
Right centre back Cameron Carter-Vickers did not complete a single pack pass in the first half, whilst Starfelt completed 11.
I don’t know whether this was accident or design. Kilmarnock’s left sided defensive pairing of Chris Stokes and Ben Chrisene looked particularly weak so why not exploit the Celtic right side?
The attack was more balanced in the second half but here is the overall pass network for the match with acknowledgement to Statsbomb and the Celtic Way:
Summary
None of this is to incite panic or even alarm.
In the end, Celtic’s overbearingly strong bench was able to come on and subsume the opponent in the latter stages of the second half. The five subs had an accumulated expected scoring contribution of 3.84! The starting ten players racked up 2.72.
I expect similar in the Semi Final. I just hope Celtic are better balanced.
We supporters needs to be patient and know that the bench cavalry is an almost unanswerable weapon if needed.