St Mirren 0
xG 0.56
Celtic 0
xG 1.64
Before kick off our probabilities of winning the game were 83%, a defeat 5% and draw 12%.
Celtic had 87% possession and 190 touches in the last 15 minutes which was even more than the 81% and 181 against Ross County in the last 15 minutes.
Overall possession was 83% in Celtic's favour with 890 touches versus 327. For accurate passes it was 616 v 63 with accuracy being 90% v 45%.
Our team line up was;
- 29 Bain
- 56 Ralston, 20 Carter-Vickers, 57 Welsh and 5 Scales - 18 Rogic, 6 Bitton and 42 McGregor - 73 Moffat, 11 Abada and 19 Johnston
There were 6 changes from the line up on Sunday. Bain, Ralston, Welsh, Scales, Bitton and Moffat coming in for Hart, Juranovic, Starfelt, Taylor, Turnbull and Kyogo.
With Abada moving back into the centre forward role like he did against Ross County. Juranovic, Shaw and Taylor coming on as subs for Moffat, Bitton and Scales.
Hazard, Montgomery, McCarthy and Henderson were unused subs. Does that mean Barkas is now 5th choice keeper?
The average player positions were as high up the pitch I can remember for most players and the defenders in particular.
The average minutes played from St Mirren's makeshift team was 36% and for Celtic it was 42%. I did mention on twitter it was 51% for Celtic but I didn't realise Hart was not playing. So 36% v 42% means it wasn't as big a make shift team for St Mirren as first thought.
St Mirren had 6 players who had played over 36% of minutes this year and Celtic only had 5 players (with one of them on 38%).
However did have 2 players starting that had 0 minutes played this year and all of their bench had 0 minutes. So maybe not that weakened a starting line up but definitely a weakened squad.
Unlike the Ross County game in which our midfielders had the most touches this game saw the most touches coming from the two centre halfs again with Welsh having 119 and Carter-Vickers having 114. Welsh havign 12.8% of the possession. Welsh had 108 accurate passes and Carter-Vickers had 102 with passing accuracy at 95% and 96%.
Scales, Ralston and Juranovic had 3 key passes each.
Carter-Vickers 7.6/8.19 and Ralston 7.1/7.64 were the top rated players.
xG by player was Johnston 0.46, Rogic 0.26, Scales 0.17, Bitton 0.17, McGregor 0.15, Moffat 0.14, Juranovic 0.11, Ralston 0.11 and Abada 0.05.
Abada had 28% of his touches in the box which was more than his 16% against Ross County and he went from 4 touches v Ross County to 10 touches v St Mirren but this still doesn't compare to Kyogo's 42% of touches in the box v Hibernian.
St Mirren had 4 shots at goal to Celtic's 31 with box shots being 20 and 4. Aerials won was 57% v 43% in St Mirren's favour and tackles won was 44% for Celtic and 47% for St Mirren. xG split by half was; - 1st half 0.47 v 0.70 - 2nd half 0.09 v 0.95
0.52 (32%) of Celtic's xG was from set plays and 0.47 (84%) of St Mirren's xG was from set plays. Post Shot xG was 0.13v1.14 versus pre-shot of 0.56v1.64
Following on from the Ross County game where attacks were uncharacteristically mostly down the right this game was the same with 33% down the right and 31% down the left.
You would need a few days to compile an article on crosses and I know many are against them but I think you need to look a bit deeper than that.
We had 11 successful crosses from 54 but I would have expected more on the left from McGregor and Scales to support the right footed Johnston. McGregor and Scales only had 3 crosses each.
Juranovic had more crosses in the his 30 minutes than Moffat and Johnston had combined.
Crosses by 15 minute segment;
- 0 to 15 mins 5 crosses (xG created 0.17)
- 15 to 30 mins 7 crosses (xG created 0.41)
- 30 to 45 mins 4 crosses (xG created 0.11)
- 45 to 60 mins 7 crosses (xG created 0.27)
- 60 to 75 mins 11 crosses (xG created 0.28)
- 75 to 90 mins 20 crosses (xG created 0.36)
xG created is general xG created during that 15 minute spell and not xG created from crosses.
The above would suggest more xG is created from less crosses but game state and defensive actions are not taken into account. If we would have had only 7 crosses in 75 to 90 minutes we wouldn't have created 0.41 xG.
Unlike others I'm not against crosses (to mix it up) against low block teams however I'm also for some shots from outside the box (again to mix it up) and it looks like our crosses in the last 15 minutes (20 crosses) impacted on our shots outside the box (only 1) in the last 15 minutes.
Ange is learning something new here (continually playing against low block teams with 10 defenders) and it may take some time to get it right. We just need to hope we can keep it close in the meantime.
Celtic Trends 🍀📈⚽️
Tony@CelticTrends.com
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