Hearts 0
xG 0.28
Celtic 2
xG 1.39
(Kyogo 67 and Oh 80)
Cochrane Sent Off 45 mins.
91% of Celtic's xG came in the second half while 100% of Hearts xG came in the first half.
Out of the six games against Hearts this season Celtic's lowest xG was in this game (1.39) with the next lowest 2.08 at home in March. However 1.39 is still higher than the two visits to Tynecastle last season as they were 1.29 and 1.16.
For Post Shot xG it was 1.98 for Celtic and 0 for Hearts.
After the last couple of games having a more right sided attacking from Celtic this game saw natural order resumed with Celtic having 43% of their attacks down the left. Compared to 36% down the right.
Celtic lined up with;
Hart
Ralston, Starfelt, Kobayashi and Taylor
O'Riley, McGregor and Hatate
Jota, Kyogo and Maeda
Two changes to the line up from the Glasgow Derby with Johnston and Carter-Vickers dropping out through injury.
Ralston and Kobayashi came into the starting line up to replace them while Bernabei and Lawal took their places in the squad. Abada also came back into the squad after injury and he replaced Vata.
Again, similar to the Rangers game Hatate was the most advanced of the midfield 3 and joining in with the pressing alongside Kyogo.
Mooy, Oh, Haksabanovic, Abada and Iwata all came on as subs for O'Riley, Kyogo, Maeda, Jota and Hatate. Bain, Bernabei, Turbull and Lawal were the unused subs.
Kobayashi received the most passes in the match receiving 68 with 17 of them coming from Starfelt. The most passing combination of the match was Kobayashi to Starfelt which happened 21 times.
Kobayashi had the most passes in the match at 107 with Starfelt next on 78.
I had a look at the comparisons of passes received and made by centre back to see if there was any significant changes with Kobayashi playing in that natural left sided centre back role.
Kobayashi received 14.7% of the teams passes. 25% of them came from Starfelt, 16% from McGregor and 15% from Taylor. Then it was 12% from Hatate and 10% from Ralston and Hart. Of the passes made 24% were to Starfelt, 21% to Taylor, 12% to Hatate and Maeda and 11% to McGregor. For Starfelt against Rangers 47% of his passes were to Taylor and 32% were to Carter-Vickers. 5% were to Hatate and 3% to McGregor with 0 passes to Maeda. Against Hearts 30% of Starfelt's passes were to Ralston and 27% were to Kobayashi.
The key stats being that 47% of Kobayashi's passes were to midfielders and forwards while for Starfelt it was 30% versus Hearts and 18% versus Rangers. Carter-Vickers was 28% versus Rangers.
Also against Rangers Starfelt had 18 forward passes, 10 progressive passes, 5 passes to the final third and an average pass length of 21.3 metres. Kobayashi against Hearts had 52 forward passes, 21 progressive passes, 19 passes to the final third and an average pass length of 21.1 metres. Starfelt against Hearts had 27 forward passes, 15 progressive passes, 14 passes to the final third and an average pass length of 19.5 metres.
Different opponents and a different dynamic versus Rangers but it will be interesting to view these same stats after this week's Glasgow Derby.
Most for xG was Kyogo 0.55, Oh 0.46 and Hatate 0.11. They had Post Shot xG of 0.98, 0.7 and 0.
For xA the best were Hatate 0.65, O'Riley 0.33 and McGregor 0.14.
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Tony@CelticTrends.com