Risks, Chaos and Simple Metrics

A guest post from subscriber Stephen McGeoch.

On Oct 23rd, in a Europa League tie against Sturm Graz, Celtic lost Kelechi Iheanacho and Alistair Johnson to hamstring injuries. The match would also prove to be the last one for some time for Cameron Carter-Vickers as he succumbed to an Achilles tendon injury. Not kicked, not freak accidents, just soft tissue giving out.

Celtic players, many with an eye on representing their nations at the upcoming World Cup must have been concerned at the level of care that they were receiving at the club.

A few days later, in a show of apparent petulance, Brendan Rodgers picked the inexperienced Colby Donovan and Dane Murray as replacements for Johnson and Carter-Vickers ahead of Scotland international Anthony Ralston and US international Auston Trusty (whom Rodgers himself had brought to the club for a fee of £6 million) for a crucial fixture at Tynecastle. Hearts duly trounced the weakened Celtic team by 3-1. A few hours later, Rodgers, depending on your point of view, walked, flounced or was driven out of the club. Celtic have been managing the fall-out from these turbulent few days ever since.

After Rodgers’ departure, veteran ex-manager Martin O’Neill was brought in to steady the ship pending the appointment of a new “permanent” manager. Wilfried Nancy then took the helm, but his time at the club was cut short after a string of terrible results, and O’Neill was re-instated for the remainder of the season.

I thought it would be interesting to look at this challenging period for the club, initially using the simplest possible performance metric - shots, for and against. I’m only using data from league games to allow meaningful comparisons. All data is from the Huddle Breakdown Stat Packs up to the Killie match.