Since the sacking of Wilfried Nancy and Paul Tisdale on January 5, 2026, Celtic have played 25 games within the league through Sunday’s 1-0 defeat to Rangers at Celtic Park.
Over that period, Celtic have averaged 1.84 in xG for vs 0.93 against, for a non-penalty xG difference of 0.91 - i.e. within the 1.00 level Alan and often reference as when randomness gets to be materially impactful in driving results.
Over the same period, Rangers have averaged 1.80 vs 0.86 for a difference of 0.94.
Set pieces have been a material equalizer, with Celtic at 0.25 vs 0.28 compared to Rangers at 0.52 vs 0.18.
Rangers have the highest xG difference on set pieces and Celtic 7th in the league over the period.
The falloff in performance levels since Martin O’Neill returned for his 2nd interim tenure has been material. Given it included 2 transfer windows and per Transfermarkt 15 players signed either permanently or on loan, to generate underlying performance levels lower than Nancy’s tenure despite that context has been some doing.
As Rhiann documented on the latest Huddle Breakdown flagship podcast, the shifts in style of play have been material vs recent seasons…and it appears to be getting worse. Through the 1st 7 league games, and despite the fixture list being relatively weak overall, xG conceded has averaged 0.97, which was almost 50% higher than the rate in the 2024-2025 season and 17% higher than last season’s rate…which was materially higher than the diabolical 2020-2021 season.
Defensive fragility has been increasingly evident, but we can now add seemingly increasing issues in attack, despite having bullied poor teams in a couple of games early this season: