One of the closed-season topics most commonly referenced by Alan and myself was the potential for material shifts in how Celtic play as part of trying to optimize for the return of Kieran Tierney. Preseason fixtures are obviously limited in utility in harnessing analytical insights, but we now have a competitive game with which to explore things a bit.
While we speculated that a shift towards more of a 4-2-3-1 structure may be in the offing, it appears to be a related but different twist.
We have a relatively recent game with which to provide simple comparison, the 1-1 result versus St. Mirren from May 17, 2025. The first image is the passes received during that game for Greg Taylor.
Next up is forward passes:
Here are the same metrics for Tierney from Sunday’s 1-0 victory over St. Mirren:
We can see from these images to degree to which Tierney is clustered deeper and wider, overall. As I referenced some during preseason, it appears that Tierney is assuming a pseudo-Lustig role at times, almost as a 3rd center back.
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