Why Rodgers’ Approach Is Right In Europe

With the European campaign effectively over for another season, the recriminations have begun.

Everyone has got it in the neck from someone. To my observation, you select the party you like the least and heap the blame on them. Cognitive Dissonance rules ok?

As mentioned on this week’s Huddle Breakdown, I’d like to call out a couple of misguided targets.

Firstly, many people’s favourite bogeyman, Peter Lawwell. I’m no fan, quite the opposite on some key matters, but he is a non-Executive Chairman with no day-to-day operational responsibilities. That’s the theory. For what it is worth, I have had no inclination from anyone in my network that Lawwell is “meddling” as he was wont to do when Chief Executive Officer. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, please DM me.

Secondly, “the board”. Again, I’d personally sweep out most of them and inject new talent with a maximum five-to-seven-year lifecycle. But in terms of day-to-day operations and specifically recruitment, the boards job is to agree the budgets with the football operations departments then monitor progress against them. Ultimately as CEO Michael Nicholson is accountable for the running of the club’s day to day operations. Again, I have no information suggesting “the board” are meddling in recruitment decisions. As above, let me know if you have evidence to the contrary.

Back to performance on the field.

Last season Ange Postecoglou stayed true to his footballing principles as he would characterise it, and Celtic attempted to go toe to toe with their Champions League opponents. Specifically, Celtic pressed high and aggressively out of possession. In possession they attempted to get as many men into the opposition box as possible whilst maintaining levels of control of the ball.

The outcomes were that Celtic were arguably one of the most entertaining teams in the group stages. But eight gaols were shipped to Real Madrid and five to RB Leipzig whilst two disappointing draws were shared with Shakhtar Donetsk in games where Celtic were statistically superior.

This season Brendan Rodgers has attempted to control games by maintaining possession often in a very passive way. The idea is to stay in the game, limit the opposition chances, and obviously to take those that come along. Out of possession the team presses when appropriate – usually when the opposition are pinned back in their own third. Otherwise, Celtic sit in a 4-4-2 mid to high block and limit space for the opposition to build.

Outcomes have been similar in terms of results with one point so far, and ten goals lost away from home. That doesn’t quit tell the story as regards sendings off and conceding late goals.

But which approach is correct if that is indeed even a valid outcome?

xG Difference

A simple but highly effective method to track long term trends in team performance is to map a rolling six game average difference between xG for and xG against.

Under Postecoglou, Celtic were consistently between 1.5 and 2.25 xG better than their opponents on average in the SPFL. What that seemed to mean in practise was that such was the overwhelming superiority in chance creation from Celtic, the vagaries of chance such as refereeing, opposition goalkeeping and pure bad luck were largely negated.

Rodgers achieved between 1.5 and 1.75 in his first spell and is heading towards a similar trend.

But what about Europe?

I stated last season that Postecoglou’s tactics would not scale to Europe without significantly better players. Why? Because a) you cannot press with the same intensity from a base of 40% possession as you can from a domestic base of 65-70% possession. The players simply ran out of energy as we saw.

And b) opposition goalkeepers and defenders in Europe are simply far superior in quality compared to Scotland and given the quality of Celtic’s forwards relative to the Champions League standard, will they take sufficient chances and c) how exposed will the team be in transition?

I think we saw that Celtic did not take their chances under Postecoglou and RB Leipzig in particular caused mayhem on the counterattack.

Three of the four highest pass packing scores against Celtic I have ever recorded were in the group stages last season (both matches versus RB Leipzig and home to Real Madrid). Simply, Celtic were too easy to play against.

This season, Celtic have been in the game in Rotterdam until an aging goalkeeper could not get across to a 35-yard shot. The Lazio home game was a coin flip, and a highly credible draw was achieved at home to a superb Atletico Madrid side. Celtic were holding their own in Madrid until a ludicrous sending off, and at 82 minutes in Rome were as likely to win as the home side.

All ifs buts and maybes, of course I accept.

But putting to one side the lack of excitement in the football, my assessment is Celtic have been much more in the games competitively for longer this season.

Let’s look at the data.

Focus on the orange line.

What this shows is for each segment of 0.5 xG difference, what percentage of “points” do Celtic typically achieve? Think of every game of football as being worth three points, even cup ties.

The most important part of the diagram is where the orange line flats out in the middle to top.

What this says is that where Celtic are between +0.5 xG and +2 xG better than the opposition the number of “points” Celtic win varies little at around 60%.

Only when you get to 2.5+ xG difference do Celtic start to win an overwhelming 90% of points.

In other words, it does not matter whether Celtic create loads of chances more than the opposition or not, their chances of success do not alter that much at this level.

In short, Rodgers is right to keep it tight and stay in the game for as long as possible. Postecoglou’s romanticised vision of all out attacking football chimed well with Celtic folklore, but the risks we saw in terms of counterattacks and openness in transition are not sufficiently outweighed by attacking momentum against defences of this calibre.

That is a bit of a romance killer I accept and does not play well with traditionalists that might insist Celtic always have to play attacking football.

But Celtic have won two and drawn four of 36 champions league away group stage matches over 23 years.

There must be a more pragmatic way other than the “Celtic way” in this environment.

Oh, and Celtic simply need better quality players, as the manager has clearly stated.