In a World Cup likely to be hampered by extreme weather, we may well see a glut of opportunities resulting from corners and set pieces. Fast open play will be tricky to maintain in such high temperatures, and reliance on the slow, considered build up taken to set up for a set play, may well become a major route to chances.

If spending 45 seconds watching Declan Rice trudge across the field for yet another long throw or punt into the box is not your idea of entertainment, you probably have not been a fan of the English Premier League (EPL) this season. Set pieces accounted for 28% of all EPL goals, the highest ratio since 2009-10. Clubs increasingly hire not only set piece specialist coaches but even throw in coaches and we’ve had the world’s best on our pod in Thomas Gronnemark.

In particular corners are the area of focus with sophisticated blocking strategies, and an increase in crowding huge, athletic beasts on top of the goalkeepers.

Even in Scotland, headed goals has increased from 78 in 2023-34 to 102 in 2024-45 and 100 in 2025-26.

Some teams have relied on set plays more than others with challengers Heart of Midlothian and The Rangers racking up 23 set piece goals, and Dundee United scoring 42% of all goals from restart situations.

Celtic, with recent traditions of smaller, more technical players and an emphasis on ball retention and space control, have been very much an outlier in not adhering to those trends for increasing set piece focus.

Celtic are by no means the least effective in generating xG from set pieces, mainly due to the volume of attacking and time spent in the oppositions defensive third. But it isn’t a priority like it is for the teams above them in this chart.

Which is by way of introduction to a review of Celtic’s set piece performance over the season.

Read more

The number of match days lost to injury rose 168% last season. Yet, this still wasn’t the most injury hit campaign on record. That was in 2018-19 as Brendan Rodgers’s history of stressing squads reached term three.

The departed Irishman seemed to have learned from his casino approach to player welfare upon returning to Celtic, yet this season it was almost a case of bringing out your dead as the mean streets of Scottish football, not renowned for being packed with goodfellas, took its toll.

What say the numbers?

Read more

As we ponder why, after months to plan and execute on getting the club in shape for the new season, we are faced with, instead, a strange stasis synonymous with club business since the early days of Ange Postecoglou, one wonders how Martin O’Neill would characterise it all.

It was to The Guardian on 30^th September 2003, that O’Neill is reported to have said to Kevin McCarrra “If it is the case (that stars like Henrik Larsson depart and are replaced with players on lower wages), we’ll have to get used to life in the slow lane”.

The situation the Irishman referred to was very different to that faced by Celtic today. Then, an expensively assembled squad reached a European final, but the club was losing money and growing the overdraft.

Now, money sits in the bank, the club is sustainably run yet has arguably never been as paralysed in terms of strategy, direction, vigour and energy.

Celtic have, of course, broken record after record since that time in racking up an incredible tally of domestic trophies including four trebles in a row (always worth reminding ourselves of that as no on else will). However, performance in Europe has seen a wilful disregard for the realities of the calendar, specifically qualification matches, and a failure to develop the club in line with industry best practise. Now, clubs like FK Bodø/Glimt, Club Brugge, Royale Union St Gilloise, Qarabag, Olympiacos and Atalanta regularly eclipse what was once a club solidly part of Europe’s upper middle class.

And let’s be honest about the last season, as gloriously as it ended. Celtic got away with gross mismanagement and essentially brute forced success despite that due to inherently superior resources. Performance levels were on a par with the worst of the 2020-21 COVID-19 afflicted season, the recent benchmark for “nadir”.

It feels like the club has not so much entered the slow lane but come to a standstill on the hard shoulder.

As I go through the usual end of season exercise of updating endless summary spreadsheets, what does that macro picture look like in the data?

I’m glad you asked the question despite likely not being enamoured with the answer.

Read more

We muse often about the power of the manager and how much influence they really have. Famously, Ian Graham opined in his book “How To Win The Premier League” that it is likely surprisingly small in terms of measurable impact, and evaluating this is the “holy grail” of football analytics.

Secondly, we usually try and contextualise performance in relation to what is labelled “game state”. Simply, this is the score and time at a given match point. Teams chasing an equaliser, for example, can be expected to attack more frequently, and teams defending a lead might be expected to attack less frequently.

Running through those themes is the consideration of Martin O’Neill and his time at Celtic, and our attempts to attribute what exactly he brought to the club that can explain the gap between objectively spotty performances (high goals conceded, low xG differential) and outcomes (20 league wins in 23).

I do not want to overpromise here, and under deliver, in relation to the pursuit of Graham’s holy grail, which as everyone knows is a wooden drinking vessel buried somewhere on an Essex farm, but rather provide some nourishment for cognitive function.

In the latest pod, which I highly recommend, I presented several views that compared the team’s xG performance based on the three score-based game states – i.e. being level, being ahead and being behind. When I built those, I had some hare-brain notion of cars and accelerating and braking, basically stuff I have no clue or interest in, and ended up displaying xG per hour as some sort of proxy for F1 performance. To get back in my lane, I’ve reworked for the much safer and more familiar xG per 90 minutes. A concept we can all get behind!

I have contained this analysis to 2025-26 and league play only as one of the points of the exercise is manager impact, and having the same squad of players as the control group therefore makes sense. The trade off is some small sample sizes.

Read more

No, Minister

Hitherto absent politicians weighed in with calls for enquiries, and for Celtic to forfeit the title to Heart of Midlothian.

There truly is nothing like Scottish football for sheer entertainment, intended or not.

The refereeing scrutiny was reignited upon publication of the regular report from the Key Match Incident (KMI) panel. This further flamed the fires for those wishing Celtic expelled, disbanded, “set down the leagues” and so forth.

It came down to two decisions involving Motherwell, at home to Hearts and to Celtic. In both instances the KMI were split on whether Alexandros Kyziridis should have had a penalty for Hearts, and whether Sam Nicholson should have conceded a handball penalty to Celtic. Both felt the final Video Assistant Referee (VAR) actions to be “incorrect”.

I’ve been doing this a long time (taking a data driven approach to assessing refereeing performances), so was mildly amused to witness so many new to this game not so much dipping their toes in the water but diving off a cliff headlong into the Atlantic.

Wherever corruption and conspiracy were insisted upon, I asked a simple question on social media platform X: “What has been the impact of poor refereeing calls over 38 matches?”. The season, of course, lasts 38 matches not two. Performances and big decisions have an impact on any match whether in August or May. To suggest corruption or conspiracy, you would expect to see patterns going back over a statistically significant number of matches and time. We know a song about that, don’t we?

Sadly, no one knew the answer.

A commonly used term from my working life was to “eat your own dogfood”. Meaning, if you are going to define policies and procedures by which staff must operate, be sure to operate them cleanly yourself.

In that spirit, I have analysed all the decisions over the season by the KMI and using a framework I have developed for assessing refereeing calls, can estimate an expected points impact of each wrong call. Thus, at the end, we can assess who has benefitted from, and been penalised by, poor calls over the season.

But first, what is the KMI?

The KMI

For a full explanation, please follow this link and click on “KMI Review Panel Explained”.

It is an independent panel of three individuals drawn from a pool of people: one “an established career in Scottish football”, one laws of the game expert, and one representative from the clubs.

Their decisions are advisory and for communication only. The canonical version of history is established by the SFA and their match assessors and some are discussed on Willie Vision. Not all decisions debated at KMI make it onto Willie Vision – the SFA VAR Review Show to give it the Sunday name.

Collum can and has and will provide a different view and explanation for a decision than that opined by the KMI. Backed up by the audio and video, and of course, he runs the expert body and knows what guidance and training has been provided.

However, mainly because it suits narratives, the KMI panel “decisions” have been treated by the wider Scottish footballing community as canon in the past week.

Let’s run with it: after all it is a more comprehensive and written account of decision reviews than we get from Willie Vision.

Impact of Decisions

The impact of refereeing on Scottish top-level football has become a specialism in recent times. My starting position was along the lines of “That’s a lot of intransigent noise. Surely the data will show few patterns to back up the wildest of imaginations”. Oh boy, did I get that wrong. Anyway, back to current day.

Assessing the impact of a decision deemed “incorrect” at KMI involves the following components:

1. The time the incident occurred;

2. The score at that time;

3. A model that estimates given the time and score, how many points each side is projected to win; and

4. A calculation to establish the impact on those expected points (xPts) caused by the decision.

So, for example, with the score 0-0 in the 90^th minute, a penalty is awarded to the home team. At 0-0, the home team is expected to end up with 1.1 points (slight home advantage – more likely to score in added time) and the away team 1 point.

The 90^th minute penalty changes this radically. The home teams expected points goes up to 2.8 xPts. An increase of 1.7 xPts from the 1.1 they already had at that time and score. However, as it is a penalty, and those are scored 77% of the time, this is adjusted to a 1.31 increase in xPts.

The away team would expect their xPts to drop from 1 to 0.05 (a 0.95 xPts drop) should a goal be scored in the 90^th minute. Because it is a penalty though, it decreases by 0.73 xPts.

So, the impact of an incorrect penalty in the 90^th minute is to increase the home sides xPts by 1.31 and decrease the away sides by 0.73 xPts.

This works without the 77% adjustment for goals wrongly allowed/disallowed.

For sendings off, having analysed five seasons worth of data, there is an average negative impact on the card receiving side depending on what time the card is issued.

Thus, we can assess the estimated impact of penalties, red cards, goals disallowed or allowed incorrectly.

2025-26 Season

The KMI publishes a written report within days of each match round, and they can be accessed and downloaded in the link above.

In 2025-26, the KMI analysed 355 decisions and deemed 26 of them to be incorrect. This represents an 7% error rate even allowing for VAR intervention. Three were in Cup matches so are ignored for this analysis. That leaves 23 incorrect calls in the SPFL Premier League. As I mentioned, not all are unanimous verdicts – a 2:1 split is not uncommon.

Not all incidents have any impact on xPts. For example, in January, Graeme Shinnie was sent off with a straight red card at Kilmarnock. The KMI panel opined it should have been a yellow card, which would have been his second, thus rendering him sent off in cany case. Thus, the incorrect decision had no material xPts impact.

Also, although not relevant this season, a 6^th goal in the 85^th minute in a 6-0 win, is effectively immaterial in xPts.

However, in summary, 23 wrong calls in the league, impacting teams as follows from a simple “counting” perspective.

Benefitted From A Wrong Call

· Falkirk 4

· Hearts 3

· Livingston 3

· Aberdeen 2

· Celtic 2

· Hibernian 2

· Motherwell 2

· St Mirren 2

· The Rangers 2

· Kilmarnock 1

· Dundee 0

· Dundee Utd 0

Penalised By A Wrong Call

· Motherwell 4

· The Rangers 4

· St Mirren 3

· Dundee Utd 2

· Hearts 2

· Hibernian 2

· Kilmarnock 2

· Livingston 2

· Celtic 1

· Dundee 1

· Aberdeen 0

· Falkirk 0

Decision Impact

The impact of those calls is estimated to be as follows:

The main takeaway is that over a season the cumulative impact for and against of decisions deemed “incorrect” was, at most, just over two points for any single club.

Why are the politicians not taking up Parliamentary time with demands Falkirk be disbanded and charged with corruption? What hold does John McGlynn have over these people? I am sure we will be told.

More germane to the title race, Celtic are estimated to have benefitted from just under two points. However, Hearts have benefitted by 0.72 points, or 1.12 less benefit than Celtic. Netted out, that would not quite be enough to make up the two points by which Celtic won the league.

Eight out of 12 clubs saw differences in xPts of less than one point positive and negative, due to incorrect decisions.

Football is a game of fine margins. With technology we should strive to improve outcomes for all clubs. The data driven evidence is that in the SPFL, none of these expected points differentials would be sufficient to change any of the final standings.

The Variance Monster

If I may be immodest for a second (these jokes write themselves), as well as a data driven approach to refereeing assessment, my other developed specialism is in attempting to build a framework for assessing variance in football.

It is a low scoring sport, and goals are huge events in matches. A lot of stuff happens over 90 minutes in such a dynamic sport, some of it controllable and some of it uncontrollable.

Variance can have a material impact on results. What do we mean by “variance”? There are obvious events that you cannot coach for such as own goals, red cards, penalties and refereeing errors.

What is the impact of those events?

Using the framework above we can estimate for that.

One other important data point to introduce at this stage, to enable us to map from expected goals to expected points. Over more than 10 years of SPFL results data, we can use the following constant: each +1 in goal difference is worth, on average, 0.6 expected points.

Armed with all this public data, we can estimate the impact of variance on each season.

Here is the estimated impact of largely uncontrollable variance events over the season:

Yes, it was plucky Hearts who most benefited from the unplanned slings and arrows of football variance. To the tune of over six points! Now that is starting to look potentially material and position changing.

The main drivers for Hearts were a positive penalty count of 5-1, and four opposition own goals.

To take over Hearts, Celtic had to make up around four points of misfortune on the field. Anyone who watched Celtic play will realise that was slightly surprising!

Poor old St Mirren were nearly five points worse off than if they had an equal dowsing of variance, although that would not have altered their position.

Just to say there is nothing particularly remarkable about any of this. I have modelled this in the SPFL back to 2020-21. The highest positive variance in that time was Celtic in 2023-24 with 8.08 expected points thanks to those unplanned events. Ross County with -7.07 in 2020-21 experienced the worst outcomes over a season.

So, the point is, there are other factors at play over and above poor refereeing that influence the outcome of football matches and have more material impacts in final points.

I have not even introduced THE most important factors: the vagaries of finishing and goalkeeper play at either end. Those have much greater influences on outcomes and are to some extent more controllable, but not entirely so.

Summary

The KMI is an advisory and opinion giving body with no executive power over refereeing performance. However, they do document fully VAR decisions in every match and provide a comprehensive source for data analysis.

Analysis of incorrect refereeing decisions can result in an expected points estimated outcome based on simple match state metrics.

In the 2025-26 season, the estimated impact of incorrect calls was very small and would not have changed any league position.

Other variance factors are more material to footballing outcomes over the season and can similarly be modelled.

Hearts have enjoyed the “right” end of those variance factors when all 38 matches are considered.

None of this will deter the terminally stupid.

As it is a busy week, a slightly abridged version to start proceedings. It is important to project forward rather than dwell on the past at this crucial stage.

Firstly, let’s look at “form” as expressed by the six-match rolling xG difference view.

Read more

You enjoying this yet?

I watched Arsenal for the first time this season in their Champions League second leg semi-final against Atletico Madrid. If you remove the insane physicality and speed, and the metronomic set piece performances, they remind me a lot of Celtic. A bit dour, cautious, quite slow in build-up, an awkward striker. But heh, they keep winning!

With five stuffy, unconvincing wins, filled with anxiousness and dangerous moments, are Celtic starting to resemble their Speedboat performances, finally?

Read more

You will have by the end, I can almost guarantee it, as I reveal the extraordinary extent of variance impact in one of the most remarkable of recent SPFL seasons.

But before that, a gentle canter through the various variance views. Vah vah vah voom, as Catherine Deneuve no doubt once said.

Read more

Over 100 goals and 100 assists going into what will be his 18 consecutive seasons as a first team player. Famously, he has scored in the previous 17 as well as accruing 26 winners medals, so far. Forrest’s Celtic career has impinged on three decades.

The need for experience and know-how going into what can only be a tumultuous summer transfer window, whilst maintaining the home-grown European quota, is not unwise, especially if, as likely, it is on reduced financial terms.

In short then, it is not a difficult decision to get behind, with the important caveat that he can at best be considered the fourth or fifth choice at the wing attack position.

Read more

It has been a tumultuous season given the changes in management in Glasgow, the influence of Tony Bloom to Heart of Midlothian, and the unexpected coherence of a new style Motherwell and a newly promoted Falkirk. Hibernian have continued to be quietly effective under David Gray.

Further down the league there is intrigue in how Steven Pressley has improved Dundee, how Craig McLeish has remodelled St Mirren post Steven Robinson, and how Neil McCann is revitalising Kilmarnock with attacking football.

That leaves an under resourced Livingston cast adrift, a Dundee United side stagnating under Jim Goodwin, and the league’s “Basket Case” champions, Aberdeen.

More positive than negative indicating a league in rude health despite the coefficient evidence!

We are here to reflect (performance versus outcome) and project (what you could/should have won).

33 games in, there is plenty of data to chew.

Read more

In terms of last season’s starters, Kyogo Furuhashi, Adam Idah and Nicolas Kuhn have all departed, Felipe Jota has missed the whole season through injury, and Daizen Maeda, allegedly wanting away last Summer, has been much less productive than prior seasons.

None of the striking replacements – Kelechi Iheanacho, Tomas Cvancara, or Junior Adamu – have mustered the 900-minute minimum for serious analysis, and the only one who has, Johnny Kenny (12.21 matches worth of minutes) has been sent out on loan to Bolton Wanderers.

What a sorry tale.

The attacking burden has fallen to Yang Hyun-jun, Maeda, Sebastian Tounekti and Benjamin Nygren.

The purpose today is simply to put their performances into context versus the forward options “normally” available to Celtic.

This analysis goes back to 2018-19 and considers any forward (striker or wide forward as Celtic have mainly played in a 4-3-3 shape) with more than 20 matches worth of minutes.

Read more

I recommend checking back to Stephen’s article on the site from Monday and this piece from Josh McCafferty on the Celtic Way.

The recruitment and manning of the striker department have been as chaotic as much of the clubs’ performance over the last year and the authors lay that out effectively.

However, are the chances being created for the strikers to miss been sufficient? And can we attribute the lack of goals to poor finishing or lack of chance creation?

Read more

Read more

The title race took another turn, as Celtic, fresh from hitting the front after defeating Motherwell, were buried in the sand of Tannadice whilst their rivals won at home.

Read more

Which tastefully brings you into the wacky world of made-up charts and numbers “explaining” the tonto season of SPFL action.

Modern social media driven reporting conventions dictate I must position Heart of Midlothian’s defeat at Kilmarnock as “BOTTLE CRASHING”.

Similarly, Celtic’s home win to everyone’s darlings Motherwell was a case of “BIASED REFS KEEP CELTS TITLE HOPES HANGING BY A THREAD”.

And finally, reverting to the mores of traditional Scottish media for a second “MURRAY PARK GALACTICOS SHOW THEIR CLASS TO DISPATCH HAPLESS SAINTS”.

Such student common room slapdashery is more reason why we cherish the forensic Bit of Bully family of charts.

It’s what you expected. (“Expected”, geddit? Oh, come on!)

Read more

Read more

Another week, another set of victories for variance over performance. Both Celtic and The Rangers rack up reasonable positive xG differences, but don’t win. Heart of Midlothian play out a coin flip match at home to Falkirk, barely generate more than 1 xG, and win.

That is not only football, but it has also been so in the SPFL virtually all season.

Hence this series, to shine a light on the stuff the genius managers would rather the children didn’t know about.

In the world of data, we are The Goonies!

Read more

One such is to chronicle the progress of captain Callum McGregor.

The Huddle Breakdown really started due to James trying to find a platform to document the decline in captain Scott Brown’s capabilities. At the time, this was seen as a highly contrarian position to take.

I hope that, whilst celebrating McGregor’s last contract extension as being a sensible piece of talent management relative to what would be available in the market, we have also been consistent in flagging and warning about the impending decline of our decorated leader.

My position, hitherto, has been – his capabilities are clearly declining but the value he adds in the role he is given is still worth it as it is largely unobtainable in the market.

The following will be as much an assessment of the resilience of his performances under duress – a team bereft of quality – as my annual documentation of his gradual decline (spoiler alert……doh!).

Read more

This weekend saw two dramatic come from behind victories for the Glasgow big clubs, and 11 goals scored.

The evident drop off in quality at Celtic and initially in the season, at Ibrox, plus other sides raising standards to meet, has led to a fascinating season.

The lack of any side putting together the kind of overwhelming xG difference run Celtic has made a habit, means our old friend “variance” has run amok.

Hence the focus of this series.

Read more

The idea of using data to try and describe that would not have occurred to many in 1985.

Indeed, the raw materials would likely not have been available until the 2010s, likely much later.

And, finally, with Celtic’s domestic dominance being so overwhelming since the death of Rangers in 2012, it hasn’t felt particularly necessary. Variances made little difference in processions to the title.

Having developed a framework to assess refereeing, it felt necessary then to develop a similar framework for variance (which to some extent overlaps with the refereeing analysis). Variance has and always will be a key built in feature of football. A low scoring sport, dynamic in nature, with many moving parts, and limited ability for coaches to influence the match once in progress.

I need to stress that the variances at play this season are not in any way unique or abnormal in relation to any other season.

What is interesting, is the distribution of variance relative to the title challengers.

Another dramatic week of SPFL football, with red cards and penalties again having a big influence on matches.

Read more