Wednesday 10th February 2021
St Mirren 0
Celtic 4 (Rogic 16, Edouard 79 PEN, Christie 82, Turnbull 83)
We had an unchanged team and went with;
- Bain
- Kenny, Welsh, Ajer and Taylor
- Brown
- Rogic, Turnbull and McGregor
- Ajeti and Edouard
With Duffy, Christie, Klimala, Elyounoussi and Griffiths all coming on as subs.
I've already touched on Rogic as an 8 in here .... https://www.celtictrends.com/post/rogic-the-no-8 and I've already posted about our Player Impact Graph here ..... https://www.celtictrends.com/post/player-possession-and-passing-plot-graph
In the game we had 18 shots (6 on target), 61% possession, 573 passes, 83% passing accuracy and we had 193 passes in the final third. Those stats were all well down on the Motherwell game (especially the passes in the final third) however we were up against Top 6 opposition this time. The most important stat was we won and we won 4-0 and the fact we weren't clinging on for the victory was an improvement.
Previously I've looked at 15min intervals and in recent times we have seemed have declined in the last 15mins on some key metrics. (Possession %, Passing Accuracy % and Our passes in the Final Third as a % of our Total Passes). I asked if this was down to fitness. Maybe, maybe not but was worth considering / investigating further.
Against St Mirren all 3 measures increased in the last 15mins with passing accuracy having it's best spell in the 75-90min segment. Again is this down to fitness? If so it must be looked at as a very positive sign.
The stop, start, continue feedback from the game is;
We need to stop believing that Brown is worthy of a start ahead of Soro. The Huddle Breakdown are planning a Podcast https://twitter.com/huddlebreakdown?s=20 to discuss our No.6 performances/options and that will be a great listen. I'm sure their conclusions will not result in Brown retaining his position.
We must start aiming for more width in our game. We rely too much on the full backs and we don't have many others contributing with width. Just because we play with a diamond doesn't mean those players can't provide width now and again. Also we need more crosses from nearer the by-line.
We should continue with the same back 4 as this has definitely helped to stabilise us recently.