Who were the Saints and Sinners in a season where Celtic committed 596 fouls and were on the receiving end of 778?
Sinners
The Crime Count table shows the Celts who have dished it out. Your get 1 point for a foul, 3 points for a Yellow Card and 6 points for a Red Card. All values are per 90m averages.
Kouassi, in just over 7 appearances, just out scores Brown by 0.01 Crime Count points per 90m. Brown conceded most fouls per 90m at 1.71.
Surprised to see Dembele up there? He conceded 6 more fouls than he received.
Lustig an Simunovic were the only Celts shown a Red Card last season, away at Aberdeen and The Rangers respectively.
Brown led the way with 14 Yellow Cards followed by Lustig 9 and Ntcham 7.
Tierney is quite angelic for a defender. He wins the award for having the biggest difference between fouls conceded and received – 48. He was fouled 84 times and conceded 36.
The Sinned
The most fouled players in terms of fouls awarded per 90m are the wingers Hayes and Roberts. Small samples both but not surprising,
In terms of volume no one can touch Brown apart from the litany of hatchet men who queue up to boot him. Suffering 109 fouls over the season, only the similarly targeted Tierney comes close with 84.
Surprisingly Griffiths is the least fouled Celt receiving 0.46 fouls per 90m. Edouard is most effective of the strikers drawing fouls at 1.44 per 90m.
Filthiest Opposition
Based on the Crime Count Points system, which were the dortiest sides faced?
Astana got a way with a lot allowed 6.83 fouls per card and conceded over 20 fouls per match. The rest of the table is probably no surprise.
Bad Bhoys
And for balance, these are the sides for whom the dark side of the Celts has been most prevalent. These are the teams whom the Hoops have fouled the most.
I don’t remember the Zenit game being particularly feisty. Especially away from home Celtic were supine beyond belief.
We saw incredibly lenient refereeing against Rosenborg where 26 fouls conceded saw only 1 yellow card. At the other end of the scale who can forget Linfield away and Griffiths being booked for being pelted with a Buckfast bottle?!
Hibernian are high up on the list – over 5 games we struggled to contain them on occasions.
Interesting that our 2 red cards came against our 2 closest challengers mmmm
On those individual incidents I don’t think there was an issue. Lustig had one of his brain freezes and panicked. Simunovic elbowed Morelos in the puss as the lead picture shows!