He's My Huckleberry

The Captain's season has me taking my xG and sticking it where the sun don't shine...

All the way back on November 18, 2024, I covered the long distance shooting of Callum McGregor in this column, and explored the relevance of long distance shooting in the NBA via the great Steph Curry. As attempted regularly within this column, the goal was to use a Celtic-centric issue in order to discuss broader topics within football and related analytics.

The column concluded with these last two paragraphs:

So all kidding aside, I hope McGregor has not been infected with the “Have a GO!!!” virus like Ryan Christie may have acquired early in the 2019-2020 season, when he scored four goals from distance on a total of less than 0.20 xG and then…well…did not keep that up.

All this is not to suggest that I expect or even think McGregor should stop shooting from long distance wholesale, but we should all probably keep our expectations in check and hope that the latent variance monster does not rear it’s ugly head at inopportune times.

At the time of that column, McGregor had scored five goals on 19 shots, all from distances beyond 20 yards, with only two of the shots from inside the penalty area. As we update those tallies through the title-clinching victory over Dundee United, he is now at a total of 10 goals from 49 shots, with three of the five goals scored since that November 18, 2024, column scored from 10 shots inside the penalty area. Both of the goals from distance after that column were from central locations.