Fridge Shaped Hole

Hope remains that Carter-Vickers will sign up for the long haul at Celtic. But we have been here before with Forster, Roberts and even Guidetti.

“Never fall in love with a loan signing”. It’s on the wall above the laptop.

The Fridge

On transfer window day in the Summer, a fridge of a man, Carter-Vickers was declared from Tottenham Hotspur. One of many Premier League players stock-piled and forever loaned. His six loans had been in the hard school of knocks in the English Championship. He’d established himself for a variety of clubs in that division, one of extreme attrition over 46 matches. He was already a USA international with 8 caps.

Celtic cracked defensive solidity, eventually, in the Scottish domestic season. A mere 28 goals were conceded in 46 Scottish matches. Post January break it was 13 in 22. Total xG Against was 36.49 so maybe Celtic over performed at home.

In Europe the systemic weaknesses of a whole new backline and some questionable pegs in holes was exploited. 27 goals were shipped in 14 ties. The xG Against was 23.78 showing that maybe Celtic were maybe unfortunate to concede that many.

Amongst all that, and an ever-changing line up. Carter-Vickers seemed to maintain an enviable consistency of performance.

Consistency

This maps Defensive Action Success Rate and Possessions Won from Defensive Actions as six match rolling averages.

The main take away is that despite the Europa League induced blips around autumn, he consistently scored around 80% for DASR across the second half of the season once the partnership with Starfelt settled down.

Peer Comparison

I’ve found the above two metrics to be excellent proxies for central defensive competency. This is because the results for each player correlate with the “eye test” as you will see from the below.

Here are the recent centre backs going back the last five seasons with Carter-Vickers included.

Essentially Carter-Vickers last season was on a par with 19/20 i.e. peak Jullien. Given the Frenchman was older and more experienced that is an encouraging starting off point.

We can also see that whilst Welsh improved, he is what we may call a Simunovic-level defender – again no disgrace for one so young.

Starfelt, whilst he cut out his individual errors to a large degree, remains more at the level of a debut season Welsh or a “want-away” Ajer. This remains a concern.

Ball Progression

One last aspect to look at is ball progression. This is measured by Pack Pass Score (extent to which lines are broken with forward passes) and Ball Carries (running with the ball and bypassing opponents or making at least 10 yards into opposition territory).

The current crop is all well to the right on the Pack Pass scores reflecting as much about how they are being asked to play as passing ability. However, Carter-Vickers is well ahead of the peer group on overall Packing score per 90m.

He does not progress the ball at feet as much and obviously Ajer was likely World elite at this.

Summary

Carter-Vickers despite never having a settled club and being relatively young for a centre back, has produced defensive performances that would put him on a par with the best centre backs we’ve seen at Celtic in recent times.

Additionally, he passes the ball out from the back in line with the managers preferred style, and with more regularity than any recent peers.

Furthermore, the options he leaves behind (Welsh and Starfelt) do not come near his standard.

He was my Player of the Season mainly due to his consistency and lack of high-quality partner.

For the new season, not only do Celtic need Carter-Vickers back, they need someone of the same standard alongside him.