Whilst no stat is completely meaningless given the right context, it is certainly true to say that passing statistics on there own can reveal little. For example, if I tell you the player with the best Open Play Pass Completion is Simunovic who completes 94% of non-set play passes, you might wonder why this is significant. No one would claim Simunovic is Celtic’s “best” passer. Rather it would indicate he takes little risk with his passing – which for a centre back is reassuring.
94% passing is therefore a positive for Simunovic and admirable in its own way given the context of his position on the field, but tells us little about overall passing ability.
McGregor
Given the Simunovic example you may ask yourself (like I did – get on with it – Ed) which attacking player has the best open play pass completion? And what does this tell us?
As the section header (spoiler) suggests, that happens to be McGregor at 92%. Yes, he has played as one of the 2 in a 4-2-3-1 but no one would argue McGregor is a defensive player like Brown, Bitton and the aforementioned Simunovic. McGregor has 9 goals this season and increasingly under Lennon is playing more as an “8” than a “6”.
His nearest challenger for most accurate Open Play Passer amongst players with attacking duties is Ntcham on 86%. That’s quite a gulf.
Safe or Sound?
Does this mean that McGregor’s passing has become safer the deeper he plays? His assist rate of 0.15 is modest compared to an historical average of 0.26 per 90m for a season.
From a deeper position, that may not be entirely surprising but there are two metrics by which we can assess deep lying creativity.
Pack Passes
Pack Passes is the ability to take opponents out the game by completing forward passes. Historically Ntcham has been the undisputed Pack Pass King. This season the best Impect scores (rates Pack Passes by scoring whether you take out defenders, midfielders or forwards) are:
Bitton is a deep lying midfielder laying predominantly as a centre back. He has even more time on the ball than when in his specialist position. It also highlights why playing Bitton at the back in games against lesser opponents can be a good idea.
There really is nothing much between the top three and McGregor completes slightly more Pack Passes than Ntcham but Ntcham’s generate a fractionally better Impect score.
Again, McGregor’s Pack Passing should be seen in context of his overall very high open play pass completion rate. He is playing insightful forward passes with accuracy.
Secondary Assists
Secondly let’s consider Secondary Assists. These are the pass before the assisting pass, also sometimes known as the Establishing Pass.
Ntcham does well by this metric and the surprise name in the list is probably Frimpong who highlights his attacking prowess.
McGregor is not far behind in 4th.
Conclusion
McGregor has played more minutes than any other Celtic player. He has already completed the equivalent of over 40 matches this season. With 2596 completed Open Play Passes he has 330 more than the next highest player. Despite having the highest volume of passes he is the most accurate of all the attacking players.
This does not mean he is playing it safe. He is up there with the Pack Pass leaders and 4th in the squad on secondary assists. Both these are indicators of deep lying creativity.
Passing stats are never totally meaningless. Sometimes you just have to look deeper.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I think the article is missing the data on mcGregor’s pass completion rate.
Ntcham’s is mentioned as well as the gulf between his and McGregor’s, but there’s no data on McGregor.
Thanks for spotting-sorted
The 3-5-2 really does unshackle McGregor, the stats you covered there must be even more impressive given the last few games.
I wonder how the stats above would look only taking the 3-5-2 games into consideration?
The eye finds him so much more noticeable since the switch. It’s great.