As is typical, staying objective can be difficult when conducting analysis, so with the big news in Scottish football this week being between the national team at the World Cup and McInnes’ move from Hearts to Rangers, I thought it timely to lay out my analytical case, and what it may mean for Celtic.

It is the same process used whenever doing an analysis on managerial performance.

The concept is pretty simple- how has the manager’s club performed relative to the relative financial resources available?

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1. What positions and roles are in need of upgrades and/or depth?

2. Given the club has limited time and resources, even assuming a new improvement in talent identification and getting deals done, what should the priorities be?

The vital position of goal keeper will be interesting to monitor as the club navigates the window, and is the topic of this column’s analysis.

As usual, the goal is to try and tease out performance attribution levels which are idiosyncratic to the players considered within this exercise.

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8 goals and an assist make him the singular person most responsible for securing a Double for the 2025-2026 season, and it is not particularly close, in my opinion.

What a way to potentially wrap up his 5th season at the club!

As far as the league season went, Maeda registered first in xG, non-penalty xG, had the highest xG per shot, 2nd most shots, 2nd most goals, 3rd most xA, 2nd most xA from open play, the most pressures (778 vs 505 by Nygren in 2nd!), regains from pressure, counterpressures, and regains from counterpressures.

Did the storybook ending to his Celtic career see him cast as a somewhat surprising hero given the nature of his goal scoring rampage?

From his tap in off a rebound as the 4th goal in the comfortable 4-0 win versus Dundee United on January 10, 2026, Maeda posted exactly 1 goal scoring contribution, an assist against Bologna on January 22, 2026, until the beginning of his outburst on April 25, 2026, against Falkirk.

In fact, I would argue that his most recent “big goal” prior to that Falkirk game was his headed goal in the 11th minute against Dundee on December 3, 2026. However, that was only a “big goal” in retrospect given it was against Dundee at home so early in the game.

His last match winning goal, obvious at the time, was his diving header to secure 3-points in the 2nd minute of extra time in the 2nd half in the 3-2 win over Motherwell on October 5, 2025, or nearly 7 months prior to the Falkirk game.

Based upon the logic I having been seeing from some regarding Alan’s KMI-related analysis on the latest Huddle Breakdown flagship episode, Celtic did not win the league without…Michel-Ange Balikwisha!

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Outside of that penalty, the non-penalty xG horse race reached the point of a relative stalemate, as was the 1-1 scoreline, after the double Hearts chance in the 86th minute - 0.82 on 11 shots for Celtic versus 1.05 on 10 shots for Hearts.

Then the title winning goal from post-split beast-mode Daizen Maeda saw Celtic rack up 1.40 xG on 2 shots, including 0.99 on Callum Osmand’s cherry on top.

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So far, events have been making my job pretty easy.

The volume of incidents to potentially cover remains large, and with the constraints of time, am limiting this column to just the Celtic game at Motherwell. Hearts scored from a bullet header from Kent, classic final third chaos leading to Devlin’s deflected goal, and a quality angled finish by Spittal.

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With referees also in the pressure cooker, I respected the consistency within the first game relative to the 2 contentious penalty-related incidents and the alleged foul on Welsh that preceded Shankland’s goal…i.e. no weak-as-piss calls. However, personally found the Shankland shove to be the least weak-as-piss of the three incidents.

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There remains quite a bit of debate on which outcome in the Hearts v Rangers best suited Celtic’s title chances - a fertile topic for this week’s podcasts.

Here, we continue on from last week’s journey through the moments, randomness, chaos, and inches which were part of how winners and losers were determined.

This exercise is not intended to be forensic or suggest any specific team was hard done - simply to point out how much such close games can come down to fine margins.

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Of course, as we always warn, single game data and related metrics are to be taken with a grain of salt, as there are material limits to what event data measure, and what the associated modeling can help infer.

To highlight these limits, I created four videos to review all the shots for each of Celtic and Falkirk, then Rangers and Motherwell.

For each shot, the expected goal and post-shot expected goal values are shared, with my eyeballing of where keepers’ positions are relative to modeling an optimal angular position at the time of each shot.

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As we look forward to the Cup semi-final, figured since I prepared would share and supplement the analysis provided by Alan and Martin:

While the second half in the league fixture Sunday was even more reflective of the unusual inversion of playing style dynamics, I clipped this continuous clip from relatively early in the first half.

Shared these two graphics on the early-week podcast and sharing again to connect the game-data with the video above.

Celtic generated two shots from pressing St. Mirren high which compares to a season-long average of just under 5. Neither team were able to generate a shot from counter attack or clear sighted on either keeper.

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What had been a material positive with Callum McGregor’s performance profile has deteriorated this season. His ability to control tempo in buildup and drive ball progression from the defensive third through the middle third and into the attacking third was important and valuable.

I can only speculate as to why he has become so risk averse this season, but with a temporary departure during the 33 days of Wilfried Nancy’s tenure, it has changed materially.

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We can see from this graphic that the non-penalty goal scoring rate (all metrics are per 90 minutes) is down from 0.589 average in the prior 8 seasons to just 0.251 this season. Notably, xG and post-shot xG (PSxG) are down less, with xG down the equivalent of one relatively poor quality (0.057 xG) chance per 90 minutes.

Given non-penalty xG for the team is down almost 17% versus last season, that 11% decline suggests that “getting onto the end of chances” has not been the major issue, overall. While not shown, xG per shot is actually up 4% versus the long-term average.

But before I get into more specifics, I created this video to walk through Tomas Cvancara’s four shots in Sunday’s victory over Dundee as a way to contextualize the metrics in the first graphic:

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Some contextual factors to consider for this analysis:

1. I use some comparative metrics between the 2012-2013 to 2015-2016 and then 2016-2017 to 2025-2026 periods. The logic behind those periods are to examine what Celtic were doing in the transfer market for the period after Rangers’ liquidation but before the analytics revolution kicked off, and then the season I use as the starting point when data and analytics began to become materially impact player trading across the industry in 2016-2017. That is my discretionary call, which is why this entire analysis is characterized as an “exercise.”

2. The football industry experienced severe inflation over this period. I attempt to capture that factor to an extent, but there is not singular calculation that can quantify “inflation” in a uniform way.

3. I use Transfermkt as my source for data. It is not 100% reliable. As we often say, data is often imperfect, all models are flawed, and our goal is accuracy over precision. The euro is used as the base currency.

4. The ratios I generate are generated as part of my analytical process and are not intended to reflect or align with player trading data reported within official club financial reports. This is not an exercise in financial reporting using IFRS or UEFA’s regulatory regime via FSR, etc.

On to the first graphic, which given the nature of the past 6 months and the contentiousness between the Celtic board and many supporters, is what I call the Board to Supporters Ratio:

The formula I used to generate the ratio is shown at the bottom of the image, with stadium capacity data taken from Transfermkt under each club’s home page on the site.

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Alan and I have been very critical of how Celtic have managed injury risks in recent years, while noting the positive outlier during the 2024-2025 campaign, when players seemed to be rotated in what appeared to be a relatively coherent fashion.

Stephen McGowan’s January 9th column published in the Herald provided a plethora of related reporting as to the extent to which the legacy culture manifested. It is a piece of reporting I am likely to return to as the autopsy of the current season is done once over.

Accustomed to elite coaching standards under Brendan Rodgers, then Martin O’Neill, first impressions were underwhelming. Rumours of players and backroom staff being unimpressed with the new manager surfaced in no time at all.

The description of Martin O’Neill as offering “elite coaching standards” was notable early in the piece. John Kennedy had departed along with Brendan Rodgers, and none of the people remaining at the club or brought in as interim coaches had CV’s which suggested “elite coaching standards.”

Despite 18 years as Celtic’s goalkeeping coach, Stevie Woods was challenged to prove himself all over again to the new regime. Rumours of a departure became a weekly soap opera with more twists and turns than River City.

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I was skeptical that the club would have the depth and staying power necessary to successfully deploy what appeared to be Jens Berthel Askou’s vision. In the interest of brevity, I will call it a Bodo/Glimt-adjacent style of play and game model.

Not only has staying power been a non-issue to date, Motherwell have been getting better.

Of the top five clubs above, only Motherwell has played in 9 vs 10 league games so far in calendar 2026. Depth and rotation in their forward line and midfield, as well as no European or late Cup runs, have probably kept the team relatively fresh.

As Alan’s most recent title race update showed, their rolling average has been trending upward.

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As pressure continues to mount in what may be a title race for the history books, how individuals and collectives respond under increasing pressure is sure to be interesting.

This past weekend offered some intriguing examples. Whether it was Derek McInnes going to 4 CB’s with a 1-goal lead at home to Aberdeen, Celtic going unusually direct for large stretches of the derby (and at Aberdeen), or Rangers being unusually passive in a “must win” home game, what might happen when the pressure REALLY ramps up?

Looking specifically at the Celtic vs Rangers game, the latter setup in possession as we speculated in last week’s Extra Time preview, with a narrow 4-2-2-2. Selection seemed coherent within that context. They played direct and looked to negate risks from Celtic pressing while they had possession.

Out of possession, Rangers seemed to be trying to target Dane Murray like they had Auston Trusty in the League Cup semifinal, but otherwise were very passive and man marking was inconsistent.

In contrast, Celtic went unusually direct, often under little or no pressure, during the first half.

Our central midfielders were generally able to make passes when under light pressure or none at all.

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1. The timing and circumstances of Wilfried Nancy’s appointment were poor.

2. It was more important for Celtic to hire Columbus Crew’s head of analytics than Nancy and they should do both, ideally.

3. Nancy’s intermediate to long-term outlook at Celtic offered promise ala Ange Postecoglou’s tenure, but that the short term was perilous due to #1.

4. Sticking with Nancy at least through February was the least bad option given the risks likely to be unleashed by sacking him and Paul Tisdale given the importance of having some semblance of coherence in the January transfer window.

5. While open to the possibility that Tisdale was not up to the job, I could discern no clear evidence from the prior transfer windows given the lack of visibility on who was responsible for what, and would reserve judgement until analyzing the January 2026 window. The only evidence available was the signing of Araujo, the targeting of now-English Premiere League player Jocelin Ta Bi, and links to Niko Sigur.

Obviously, the club decided to go down a very different path, so today I review what credible evidence there was/is to support those decisions.

I will not review the Martin O’Neill timeline, as his CV is well known.

However, Shaun Maloney’s seems less so outside of relatively surface-level information on where he has worked.

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This graphic is a scatter plot of non-penalty shots conceded and shots from open play conceded in all league games since the beginning of the 2018-2019 season. As is probably unsurprising to most, the greatest volume of shots conceded have generally been in derby matches at Ibrox, including the outlier from January 2025 in the truly awful 3-0 defeat.

For the non-derby games I have highlighted above, here is some additional information on each in chronological order:

As has often been the case over recent seasons, Celtic often get results versus overmatched domestic opposition even in games where performances are not very good.

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The specifics from that clip are obviously different, but the underlying question is commonly apt, “What’s the problem?”

Since the departure of Kyogo last January and the diabolical summer transfer window, many have understandably considered the striker position the biggest problem at Celtic…kinda like replacing Giambi was for the scouts in that clip?

The striker position has been A problem, but has it been “THE problem?”

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Through last week’s game versus Falkirk, Celtic have an average non-penalty xG of 1.71 through 24 games. In the nine league games under both Martin O’Neill tenures, that falls to 1.64.

The image above lays out various performance measurables related to goal scoring by Celtic strikers in recent seasons.

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