Centre Health

By James Dailey

Are Celtic well covered at Centre Half? This seems such a simple question, but the answer is unfortunately conditional. Two centre halfs at Celtic get what I believe to be unfair criticisms which focus on relative weaknesses, ignore strengths, and lack contextual benchmarking. Of course, performance levels are irrelevant if players cannot stay on the pitch due to injury, and that is legitimate concern and criticism given the injury records of Jozo, Bitton, and Elhamed. However, I read and hear all the time about how Jozo “isn’t good enough” or that Bitton “isn’t a centre half”. (*nods* Ed) I addressed the Bitton characterization in my prior piece, and now will do a more comprehensive review of our centre halfs. Obviously, none of this is of value if guys cannot get and stay fit.

Benchmark Bingo

“Contextual benchmarking” is just a fancy way of saying that comparing performance levels of players and teams to a logically selected peer group can offer important information and context. Alan has done heroic work in documenting and sharing how Celtic players have performed and has often benchmarked them versus elite Celtic players – for example comparing our centre halfs to Van Dijk’s performance levels while at Celtic.

This piece will extend that idea further, as I’ve constructed a peer group of the other 15 Europa League teams (EL Sample) in the same pot as Celtic, which is comprised of group stage victors and some of the teams dropping down from the Champions League. For this review of our centre halfs, I’ve calculated the average performance statistics for 30 centre halfs from those 15 clubs for the current season, which include the likes of Ajax, Porto, Salzburg, Inter Milan, Malmo, and Sevilla.

Clone Wars

One of the important aspects of benchmarking performance data is trying to make sure you are comparing “apples to apples.” Alan’s defensive data and metrics offer an incredible degree of insight and value, but I do not have access to the same data/metrics for all of Europe, and Alan would probably need to clone himself so many times that he would be confused for Jango Fett! (If Jango Fett is a fat, bald, middle aged man then yes, guilty – Ed)

As a result, I’ve selected this sample of stats from Wyscout and filtered the data for each players’ total career minutes at the centre half position at a top-flight club. As has been widely reported, Elhamed played a significant amount at CB while in the Israeli top-flight. The data is for club games only (domestic Cups and European club play included) and excludes club friendlies and any international appearances.

I encourage readers to go back using the search bar and re-read the great articles Alan has published in the past documenting and benchmarking Celtic players’ defensive stats. This is just one example from June 13^th, 2019, where Alan documented Simunovic’s performance levels last season. The common narrative circulating that Simunovic is not good enough or a “bomb scare” is simply not supported by the data. If fit, and that remain a legitimate issue, Simunovic is precisely the kind of player we’d all be celebrating if signed in a transfer window.

Conclusion

As a group, if you examine the table above and compare to the average from the sample I’ve calculated, it provides some context for the relative quality and level of our centre halfs. En masse, our players profile as mostly average to above average for that level, which is pretty good. Could we have reasonably expected a new January signing to bed into the side with a timeline faster and more effectively than the recovery timelines for Jozo, Bitton, and Elhamed?

The relative ages of our players suggest that they have several more years to remain in their primes, or in the cases of Ajer (age) and Bitton (experience), have a runway to get even better. My personal opinion is that Jozo profiles as both good cover for Jullien in the centre of a back three and as the RCB against higher level opponents, with both Bitton and Elhamed good options at RCB in a back three versus packed in SPFL defenses. Add in the potential for development from a youngster like Welsh, and we have deep and talented cover at the position.

Now about that Sports Science department…..

Celtic By Numbers Addendum

I’m honour bound to trot out the chart I always use for centre halfs, which I believe consistently passes the eye test. As a reminder, this plots Defensive Action Success Rate with Possession Win (from defensive actions) %.

And here it is:

James’s valuable point is that by using external (to me) Wyscout data he can compare Celtics defenders to an appropriate European sample group.

My intention is simply to compare the defenders at Celtic against each other. By the numbers, Jullien and Ajer are Celtic’s stand out pair.

But as James alludes to, our crop of options is decent at Europa League level.

And PS – the notion Ajer is having a poor season….baffling.