Odsonne to Flourish

A snapshot of shooting efficiency. This does not take in the Partick Thistle cup match – sorry James!

Only players who have had more than 10 shots on target are included (14 in reality).

Shot Accuracy

This is simply the % of all shots the player manages to get on target.

Sinclair was the most accurate earlier in the season, but with increasing game time, Dembele has taken over. Nearly half his efforts are on target.

Forrest leads the way for the attacking midfielders. Armstrong has a surprisingly good accuracy rate considering how few of his efforts have gone in (4 goals so far). Griffiths will try from much greater distance than the other strikers as we know.

Rogic and Ntcham should consider their shot selection decisions.

Shot Location

Generally, you are more likely to score taking shots within the box and certainly closer to goal, the more central the better. I don’t track location coordinates of shots but in terms of in box shooters:

Young Edouard is (pre Partick Thistle game) up to 883 minutes, nearly 10 games of playing time. He has taken over from Sinclair as the in-box predator, with 83% of his efforts being in the danger zone. Sinclair, Forrest and Dembele are similarly selective but after that it falls to the 50% and below club.

McGregor is slightly surprising but as we will see, he picks his shot selections well. Ntcham has benefited from deflections to boost his goal tally, which is likely not sustainable. Whilst Armstrong is still believing that last season’s amazing goal haul including many outside the box efforts, is sustainable. Life just isn’t like that unfortunately!

Chance Quality

You all know by now that Expected Goals measure the quality of the chance – the probability the shot would have been a goal given historical performances from that general location and conditions. We only measure non-penalty goals (NPG) as penalty taking is a separate skill. So, who has the best xNPG probability per shot?

Once again Edouard tops the charts with each of his shots averaging 0.118 xNPG. This is well ahead of Sinclair who usually leads this table. Griffiths would probably like to higher up this table. Rogic, given his technique, is particularly disappointing, each shot 3.8 times less likely to score than one of Sinclair’s, for example.

Ntcham once again gets the “Most Optimistic” award.

Finishing Effectiveness

Finally let’s consider the effectiveness of the shots on target. Having achieved the first objective – you can’t score if the shot isn’t between the sticks! – how many on target shots does it take to score?

Here McGregor leads the way taking only 2.43 shots on target to score a goal. McGregor and Forrest are quite circumspect and deliberate in their finishing – tending to place the ball towards the corner rather than go for a wild thrash.

I would contend Ntcham has had a fairly lucky streak this season especially early on with the number of favourable deflections bumping up his number but will be happy to be proven wrong!

Griffiths does better by this measure and the eye test tells us he is an accurate shooter.

Armstrong taking 6 on target shots to score – this may be indicative of ill fortune – being the victim of good saves for example. But as we can see above, shooting from closer in will help him.

Conclusion

I wanted to call out two main points from this:

1. Edouard has made a promising start to his Celtic career in terms of shot selection, quality and outcome.
2. There are many and varied ways to express the art of shooting and I have shared just some of them with you.