The February derby at Celtic Park was a wonderful, raucous, pedal-to-the-metal, under the lights night for Celtic. Postecoglou’s new Celtic tore into Van Bronckhorst’s reigning Champions from the first minute and had established a 3-0 lead by half time. More importantly, Celtic had been utterly dominant playing the style of football the Australian espouses. By … [continue reading]
Opposition Performance
Good-Bad-Lucky-Unlucky – Away With the Fairies!
Ahead of the next match, and in advance of the run in to the league, let’s take a look at home the SPFL teams are faring as regards goals for and against versus expected. Yes, it is time for the good/bad, lucky/unlucky graph! What does all that mean? Here are the definitions: Bad and Unlucky … [continue reading]
Who Has Striking Edge In Title Race?
As the title race reaches the final laps, let’s look at the comparative creative and goal threat across the squads to see who may have the firepower to secure the crown. I have used Opta data for this analysis and it relates only the SPFL Premier matches. The method will be to compare each position … [continue reading]
Hearts in the Right Place
Celtic’s “catch up” to Christmas continues tonight with a “must win” game against Hearts as they face a run of ties after their main rival plays. A 7-point gap already seems daunting, and worse, Hearts could take second spot with a win tonight. For a fuller discussion on this game check out the latest Huddle … [continue reading]
Wobbling Hibernian Next for Controlling Celts
Celtic’s opening SPFL fixture round concludes away to a Hibernian. They are a 4th side that would likely form the top 6 come next Spring. Which probably makes the post-split fixture shenanigans more, err, shenanigany. Unbeaten until 3 matches ago, the Edinburgh side sit 5th, 4 points behind Celtic. An impressive start to the campaign … [continue reading]
A Tough Nut Next for Celtic
The top two sides in Scotland over the last decade clash at Celtic Park on Saturday. Celtic’s 8th 3pm kick off of the season see’s Cup Kings St Johnstone in town. Following gallant defeat to Galatasaray in Europe, the Saints have only got two league wins over the hapless pair of Aberdeen and Dundee. The … [continue reading]
SPFL Attacking : First 8 Games
As we are still in the international break, a checkpoint on the SPF attacking stats to date. A Troubling Start? On a recent A Celtic State of Mind bulletin I gave a bullish response to the question of what the data showed regarding how are Celtic performing. Here is some more context to that. Although … [continue reading]
Livingston Preview
Livingston have had success against Celtic at home in recent times. Martindale has adopted a very basic style of long ball, combative football, maximising the resources at his disposal as is wise. Owen J Brown does a nice job describing how Livingston have adapted their approach this season. The West Lothian side are bottom of … [continue reading]
AZ Find Rest Not The Best Medicine
And rest…… The AZ tie was positioned as Postecoglou’s first big test. That Celtic negotiated the tie and are in the Europa League groups is well ahead of where many of us thought we’d be in June. So, despite a nerve shredding defeat in the second leg that brought back memories of Be’er Sheva, this … [continue reading]
The AZ Win In Perspective
How to put Celtic’s 2-0 first leg victory over AZ Alkmaar into context? Qualitatively we know they finished 1 point behind PSV Eindhoven last season. Celtic are 50th in the UEFA Coefficient rankings and AZ 89th. That’s very much an historical view. AZ are 74 on the ELO ratings (1642) compared to Celtic who are … [continue reading]