Supplement to my piece posted yesterday and what I saw as the structural problem with Celtic's midfield much of the season- particularly against better opponents. And by "better" I mean both on field talent but also the likelihood of better analytics and managers using that info.

Referenced in the piece that Rangers under Gerrard had effectively cut off 1/3rd of the field- we had just 1.86% of our xG from the right side of the pitch in the 7 derbies vs a Gerrard managed Gers. If I look at the games this season against Gers level and higher....

Where we played primary 4-2-3-1, that adds games against Rennes, the 1st vs Lazio, and the 2nd vs Copenhagen. In aggregate, just 11.1% of our xG came from the right 3rd, with effectively 0% in 9 of 11 games! This compounded the existing lopsidedness of our attack in SPFL overall.

I am far from a competent tactics analyst but would think it easier to defend 2/3rds of the pitch vs all of it. Now some average passing maps for some of those games to offer a graphical representation of the issue. First is the 2-0 win at Ibrox in September. Acres of nothing rt.

Brown is a central 6, McGregor a box to box 8 and Christie a 10. The right sided 3rd basically vacated and poor Forrest gets hammered for "not turning up." Next is the Dec 29th 2-1derby loss. This one is messier because of the subs-6, 21 and 9. Ex-them it looks similar to Sept.

Those subs coincided with a shift to 3-5-2 and note how much more balanced we were with Ntcham in the right half space previously abandoned. In just about 25 minutes, the Bitton/Ntcham/Frimpong side largely controlled and dominated the game. Now we move to Rennes from Nov 28th.

Not quite as extreme as the others but again Brown is central rather than rt sided, and Christie was RW and Forrest LW. Again, advanced rt side largely abandoned. Next is the 1st Lazio game. Brown is rt sided but deeper than McGregor and same lack of presence in the rt half space

Lastly, the 3-1 nightmare vs Copenhagen. The right 3rd almost completely abandoned. This all comes back to why I was critical about saying we played 4-3-3 instead of 4-2-3-1. One could argue we played neither, which was the major problem better teams capitalized on.

For comparison, here is the average pass map for just the 27 minutes while in 3-5-2 from December 29th. As long as our best 2 players are biased left (McGregor & Edouard) we are likely to tilt that way. However playing a system that compounds that issue is a bad idea, IMO. End