Economy of Outcome

The extent to which style of play versus player attributes influence the data each player generates is a theme I will return to many times over the Age of Ange.

Nowhere is this starker than in the striking position.

Celtic have been blessed with the abilities of Dembele and Edouard over recent seasons. Griffiths scored over 100 Celtic goals in the same period.

In the last season it looked like no Celtic player would score double figures in the league. Something we had not seen since the dark days of the mid-1990s. In the end, Giakoumakis was 1 goal away from being SPFL top scorer! Injury to Furuhashi and early fitness issues to the Greek meant Celtic were teaming and ladling at striker for much of the season. A familiar tale.

Seeing both tag-team for four goals in the final match against Motherwell is a tantalising prospect for the season ahead.

But, for today, I wanted to assess the striking role in comparison to previous seasons.

Scoring

Firstly, let’s look at Non-Penalty xG per 90m.

It was quite a comeback from an inauspicious start for the new Gorgeous Giorgos. His final npxG90 is significantly higher than any Celtic striker in the last four seasons. It is not a massive sample – he played the equivalent of 16.44 full matches. But still. In 19/20 Edouard was operating at elite Europa League level both as a striker and a number 10 – at the same time.

Furuhashi’s xG settled similar to early period Edouard but anything over 0.5 is good.

At 27, and based on his wider skill set, few would make a case for Giakoumakis being as talented as Edouard or Dembele, so there may be something in this system vs player debate.

Creating

For this we’ll plot Chances Created and Expected Assists (xA) both per 90m.

The current pair of strikers rank lowest for Chance Creation in the last four seasons. Furuhashi’s xA is high though, over 0.3, meaning he doesn’t create many chances but when he does, they are good ones!

Griffiths scores well here but remember he took a lot of corners and free kicks.

Edouard has the highest xA from this period – as mentioned above he was operating at an elite level in that 19/20 season.

But overall, it is clear that the current strikers, whether by design or skill set, are not as involved in creating chances.

Build Up

We can assess involvement in build up play plotting Pack Passes Received and Touches In The Box.

What this emphasises again is what an excellent all round forward Edouard was.

Furuhashi’s build up involvement is commensurate with Griffiths. Which might have been considered an insult back in the day.

As can be seen, Giakoumakis is not one to get on the end of forward passes, unless they are into the box.

To further hammer home this point, here are the Open Play Passes completed per 90m:

Involvement in general play is noticeably lower from the current strikers as measured by the number of open play passes they complete. Giakoumakis barely completes 10 in 90 minutes.

I used to joke Griffiths had more shots than passes (I appreciate this is a lame, “data-guy” type joke) but Giakoumakis redefines the parameters of that particular (lame) humour.

Pressures

Finally, recent seasons has seen the emergency of Pressures data – that is, the number of times per 90m a player puts the opposition under pressure when they have the ball. In old money this was closing down. Folk of my generation will remember Ian Rush of Liverpool being an excellent proponent of this.

Griffiths was surprisingly good at haring around chasing down defenders with the ball. I could insert a risqué joke about chasing stuff on a Saturday night here, but I will remain professional.

Edouard, on the other hand, was quite the dilettante. Wafting a disdainful hand at defenders without ruffling the cravat.

The current pair apply pressure at almost double the rate of strikers in recent years.

Summary

In “Inverting The Pyramid“, Jonathan Wilson wondered whether the future of football would be a team of identical athletes all with high end ball skills. That notions of specialism would disappear. Rugby is edging this way with all players requiring ball skills and speed as well as muscle. One wonders if Guardiola could fill the 11 shirts of Manchester City with David Da Silva clones, he would.

Postecoglou and Guardiola are very close by all accounts and there are similarities to their philosophies. However, whereas Guardiola all but eschews traditional strikers, Postecoglou has pared the responsibilities of his point men down to the bones.

Minimal creation, minimal build up, but maximum penalty box presence and getting on the end of chances. The quid pro quo is work your knackers off out of possession.

Operating under this template, Giakoumakis seems a perfect recruit. His attributes are optimised for this very role. When you consider a young, raw Edouard cost £9m many years ago, getting a specialist in over an all-round talent, may make economic sense as well.

A final thought, one wonders how Jimmy McGrory would have fared under Postecoglou!