The third match preview of the season for Celtic v Motherwell and yet Celtic have only faced some teams once.
Probabilities for the match are Celtic 73%, Motherwell 9% and 18% for the draw. This is up 3% for Celtic on the previous game at Fir Park.
Motherwell play with 4 at the back and on Sunday (versus Hearts) they played the following team in a 4-2-3-1 formation;
1 Liam Kelly
16 Paul McGinn, 15 Sondre Johansen, 4 Ricki Lamie and 24 Matthew Penney
8 Callum Slattery and 27 Sean Goss
29 Connor Shields, 7 Blair Spittal and 17 Stuart McKinstry
9 Kevin van Veen
From an expected points point of view Motherwell are 4th in the league.
In the league game at Celtic Park Motherwell only had 0.28 xG and it was even lower in the cup game at 0.15. Celtic had 3.39 in the league and 4.82 in the cup.
Below is their xPts trend for the season so far with the chart coloured coded to reflect the result of the game. IE Red was a defeat, amber a draw and green a win.
They were very unlucky not to beat Dundee Utd and also unlucky not to beat Hearts but they did have luck on their side away to St Mirren on the first game of the season.
Motherwell’s PPDA for the season was 4th at the time of the cup game but they have now dropped to 6th and are on 10.01 per game. In the cup game their PPDA was 11.5 with Celtic’s being 5.5.
Goss had their most passes in that cup game with 39 and a 72% accuracy with 6 to the final third (83% accuracy).
Their left back Penney had their most xG at 0.09 and he won 5 out of 5 defensive duels attempted.
van Veen has 0.49 goals per 90 and 0.63 xG per 90 in the league this season but that drops to 0.28 goals per 90 when you take out the penalties.
I predicted a 5-0 win for the last game at Fir Park and was just one goal short of that and I think we might see that 5-0 is this game instead.
Celtic Trends 🍀📈⚽️
Tony@CelticTrends.com