By James Dailey
As part of my first piece on Celtic by Numbers, I laid out my case as to why Odsonne Edouard’s talents and playing style would be better utilized with a strike partner – particularly one which plays in a more traditionally advanced and preferably central to centre right role. I was mistaken to exclude Leigh Griffiths from that piece, as I admit I had my doubts about his ability to return to play at a high level. I followed up with taking a look at how the team had performed using the 3-5-2 formation on February 9th, though the sample size remained limited at that time. As we head towards Sunday’s derby, and with the sour taste of the two December derbies still fresh in many of our mouths, a fundamental question many supporters have is whether Lennon will go 3-5-2?
Martin Melly of the 20 Minute Tims podcast (I’ve been a charter Patreon supporter of the podcast) commented on a pod this past week that he had recently interviewed Neil Lennon and that Lennon had said to him that the reason they had gone to playing 2 up top was to try and build the team’s play around its best player- Edouard. I was thrilled to hear this terrific nugget from Melly! Now about that midfield….
Derby Duo
I would be shocked if Lennon does not lineup in a 3-5-2 on Sunday, though there certainly remains a lot of intrigue as to his selections to fill out the remainder of the first team. But there can be no doubt as to whom will play as the strike partnership, and it is a partnership which has proven its effectiveness to date.
The heatmaps directly below are Edouard for the 9-1-2019 game at Ibrox on the left, and Leigh Griffiths for the entire 2019-2020 season through the St. Mirren game:
As is quite clear and is a consistent theme in Edouard’s play and heatmaps, is his tendency and skill at dropping left and collecting to ball to face up and dribble at defenders. As I had hoped, a central to centre right strike partner has resulted in 1+1=3.
Here is a basic summary of attacking output from Edouard this season broken down between games in which he was the sole striker and those he’s played with Griffiths since the winter break. All figures are normalized to be per 90 minutes.
His goal and xG tallies have certainly increased, but I believe just as importantly it has unleashed his creativity. As I mentioned in a prior piece, a 0.41 xA is output of an elite attacking midfielder (number 10). If it has sometimes seemed as if Edouard has been playing like both an elite striker and elite number 10 all at the same time, it is likely because he has been!
With that effusive praise for Edouard out of the way, it is time to give Leigh Griffiths the credit he deserves. He has made skeptics like me look like a real ass – kudos.
One quick note- I’ve estimated his xA in this table to try and account for his primary role in taking corner kicks, which is still reflected in his assists per 90 minutes metric. I believe the 0.16 figure is a reasonable approximation for his xA from open play over the period.
As you can see, Griffiths’ production has been a return to his former glory and that of an elite level striker, but his creativity has also been improved by playing with Edouard. In fact, Griffiths has averaged 5.10 passes per 90 minutes to Edouard, while Edouard has averaged 3.83 passes to Griffiths. While these may not seem like big numbers, they are quite high relative to typical passing data between strike partners or even between Edouard with wings like Forrest and Moi when we’ve played in 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3.
Conclusion
I’ve been quite critical of Lennon’s decision making this season, but he’s been bang on with pairing Edouard with another striker, and his confidence and patience with Griffiths has also proven to have been wise and rewarded. In fact, much of my criticism of Lennon relating to the Copenhagen defeat was his decision to abandon this post-break revelation. Not surprisingly, Edouard accumulated exactly zero xA in the two Copenhagen games playing as a sole striker. I hope and expect that Lennon will not make the same mistake on Sunday.
That might work in the SPL but there is a problem with our defence. Attacking is great but it is no good scoring 5 if the opposition score 8. We need at least one other quality centreback probably two. Ajer could then play midfield with another defensive midfielder leaving Callum between them and Jeremy and James either side of that three.
Alternatively we could play four at the back with four in midfield if one of the strikers could move into the midfield when we do not have the ball.
We have to come to terms with the fact that our defence is not strong enough against better European teams. We can usually score goals for fun. Five in the midfield is ok but you must have two defensive midfielders there.
It is the midfield that is crucial. Wingbacks must as well as attacking protect the back three in the wide areas. There must always be a worry against European teams that our back three can be moved around in their attempts to stop a wide player leaving gaps for runners to move into.
Good points Chris although I would disagree about two defensive midfielders, or even one. Modern footballers need to be more than that now and most big clubs do not play strictly holding, defensive players in the middle or just behind. I agree our defenders can be found wanting in Europe ( although Lazio shows differently) but it’s attacking and defending as a team, a more cohesive unit whereby mistakes like Jozo’s are coached out. If we had those type of players, virtually free from error, they wouldn’t be at Celtic. Liverpool should have beaten Atletico Madrid but didn’t.
Simunovic’s individual error aside- which of course can’t be legislated for by any coach- I believe the most significant factor in losing to Copenhagen was Lenny’s decision to go with the formation he did on the night. He upset the whole balance of a winning team. He dropped Griffiths and left Edouard isolated up front- if Copenhagen had two top class strikers to worry about they would have been on the back foot more often than not, Lenny offered them far too much respect. What formation were Celtic actually playing on the night? Was Forrest playing wing back? If so why was Taylor, who is a LB, playing wing back? Presumably Taylor was playing Left WB because he offered better defensive cover than Moi or Forrest there? But what defensive cover does Forrest offer? Or was it Ajer who was playing RB? He hardly seemed to ever be playing there but instead seemed more central as in a back three- so was it a back three we were playing against Copenhagen? If so would it not have been better to have Frimpong on the right instead of Forrest? IF we did play Ajer at RB why did he get the nod ahead of Bauer or Frimpong, both of whom are actual RB’s? It smacks of the same mad desperation Lenny displayed during the Cluj debacle when he played McGregor at LB- rather than drop the likes of Ajer or Forrest or someone else he’ll force squares into round holes rather than play the personnel best suited to the tactical formation- this I think is his biggest weakness: he has a rigid pecking order of favourites he completely trusts and the rest of the players are then forced to work around that nucleus. There are a number of other things I never understood from the Copenhagen game: why did he take so long to bring Griffiths on? When he did so why did he take off Moi- this left us weak on the left ( Copenhagen then exploited this just after we scored)- instead he should have put Forrest on the left and put Frimpong on the right. Why did he play Moi from the start when he was clearly not fully match fit- why not use him as an impact sub? Why did Rogic play the whole 90 mins? Everyone in the stadium could see he was dead on his feet after 70 mins. Rogic should have been replaced by Bitton just after we scored. There are other factors that I simply didin;t understand but I’m beginning to sound anti-Lennon when in fact we’ve had a brilliant season and Lenny has largely been a breath of fresh air- we ought to be grateful for some of the brilliant football we’ve played this season.
* as for the constant mistakes and individual defensive errors we make in Europe I think its about time we used a significant amount of our capital reserves to bring in a top class defensive coach from another European football culture, possibly Italy or Spain, to revolutionise out attitude to how we operate defensively- we really need someone from outside the Celtic family to come in and show us how its done.
Great idea to invest in defensive coaching. Our defenders get caught out far too often when playing against decent teams in Europe. Improving defence organisation is usually the easiest, and cheapest, way to improve results.
Couldn’t agree more. This is a very thought-provoking analysis. Edouard reminds me of Dalglish, especially is the way he partnered orthodox strikers such as Rush. It’d be nice to think that Celtic could build a team around this lad. Unfortunately, I expect that’s going to be another similarity with Dalglish.
Here’s a thought: do you think he’s better than Dalglish? At the same age? I think he might be.