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Writer's pictureTony McLaughlin

Hearts v Celtic (Match Preview)



Probabilities for the match are - Celtic 65%, Hearts 14% and 21% the draw. Hearts are 4th in the league on 11pts and they have 11.63 xPts. They are 7th for xG on 9.1 (7 goals) and they are 2nd (behind Rangers) for xGA on 7.9 (5 goals conceded).


Below is their xPts trends graph per game which shows they were unlucky with their defeat to Motherwell when they had 1.63 xPts.


They are top for PPDA on 8.9 with Rangers 2nd and Celtic 3rd.

They are 3rd for passes per match and possession per match. Hearts were at home to Hibernian in their last game and they lined up with the following;

  • 28 Zander Clark

  • 21 Toby Sibbick, 2 Frankie Kent, 15 Kye Rowles and 3 Stephen Kingsley

  • 14 Cameron Devlin and 8 Calem Nieuwenhof

  • 17 Alan Forrest, 51 Alex Lowry and 77 Kenneth Vargas

  • 9 Lawrence Shankland

Kent was signed in the summer for Peterborough, Australian Nieuwenhof was signed in the summer from Western Sydney Wanderers FC, Lowry is on loan from Rangers and 21 year old Costa Rica international Vargas has been signed on loan from Cost Rican club CS Herediano.


Subs used were right back Odel Offiah, central midfielder Beni Baningime, central midfielder Jorge Grant and forward Liam Boyce and they came on for Kingsley, Lowry, Vargas and Devlin.


Unused subs were ex-Celt goalkeeper Michael McGovern, defensive midfielder Peter Haring, left sided central midfielder Andy Halliday, central midfielder Aidan Denholm and striker Kyosuke Tagawa. Top for xG per 90 are Tagawa (17th in SPFL) on 0.42 and Boyce (25th) on 0.34. Top for xA are Grant (5th) on 0.31 and Lowry (17th) on 0.23.


Shankland had 33.3% of Hearts non penalty xG last season which was the most that any player contributed to their team's total in the league. He also contributed 8.1% of the team's xA which was 4th highest in the team.


Kent is 4th in the SPFL for accurate long balls per 90 at 5.1. Rowles is 10th for accurate passes per 90 on 61.9.

Rowles is 3rd for blocks per 90 on 1.3. Top rated players are Kent (12th) on 7.54, Kingsley (31st) on 7.29 and Devlin (50th) on 7.15.


In the game against Hibernian best for xG were Sibbick 0.40 and Forrest 0.24 and best for xA were Forrest 0.19 and Shankland 0.16.


Shop map for the last match against Hibernian is below. They had 15 shots with 8 on target and an average xG per shot of 0.083.

In this game Hearts had 1.25 xG and 1.2 Post Shot xG with Hibernian on 1.32 and 0.6. Hearts had 1.31 xPts in this game. Despite the game being played at Tynecastle Hearts only had 44% possession although they did lead for 40 minutes of the game and were never behind in the game with it ending 2-2.





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Celtic Trends 🍀📈⚽️



Tony@CelticTrends.com


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