Celtic go in to his game on the back of a recent downward trend of performances.
Since half time at Pittodrie Celtic have played Raith Rovers, Dundee, Bodo-Glimt twice and Hibernian and all have been sluggish or poor performances.
However looking at Celtic's NP expected goals graph then the performances look healthy if not spectacular. NP xG is still trending upwards with a real cornerstone of the success this year coming from NP xGA and Celtic conceding very few expected goals per game.
The graph below has NP xG (black), NP xGA (red) and NP xGD (grey).
The stat that Hart and Carter-Vickers haven't conceded a league goal in the last 20 minutes this season is testament to the control the team have in games.
Celtic's current 6 game rolling average xGA is 0.496 which is the lowest since the first 6 games of last season which produced a 6 game rolling average xGA of 0.47.
Below is St Mirren's expected goals graph.
St Mirren's season is not as successful as last season's and this has been down to both xG declining and xGA increasing. Their xG per game is 0.2 less than last year and their xGA is 0.22 more than last year.
However for their last 6 games they are 3rd in the form table with Livingston 2nd. (The two teams Celtic face this week).
They were beaten 2-0 by Hearts at home on Saturday and prior to that they drew with Livingston and Motherwell and beat Aberdeen, Hibernian and St Johnstone.
Against Hearts they lined up;
- 1 Alnwick
- 22 Fraser, 4 Shaughnessy, 18 Dunne and 2 Tait
- 6 Power and 13 Gogic
- 11 Kiltie, 43 Ronan and 7 Jones
- 21 Grieve
With Flynn, Brophy and Main coming on as subs for Kiltie, Power and Grieve.
St Mirren have a positive goal difference of 1.49 per game more when Ronan is on the pitch versus when he isn't on the pitch. In regards to negative variance Flynn has the most 2.11 of a negative variance when he plays.
Only 4 players have over 2.0 xG for the season with Brophy their highest on 5.07 (scoring 6 goals). Next is O'Shaugnessy 3.74 (3 goals), Main 3.01 (1 goal), Ronan 2.06 (6 goals). Ronan also has 3 assists while Tanser and Kiltie have 4 assists. Ronan has the best passing accuracy at 80.1%.
Match probabilities;
- Celtic 83%
- St Mirren 4%
- Draw 13%
A Celtic win by 2 or more goals would be good to ease the fans' nerves.
Celtic Trends 🍀📈⚽️
Tony@CelticTrends.com
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