A comment I see often referring to Celtic under Brendan Rodgers can be summarised as “slow and ponderous build up”.
Someone even sent me this from the Opta data driven The Analyst site to illustrate.

Apologies this will look very small on a ‘phone! Follow the link above to browse more comfortably.
Celtic are firmly in the “slow & intricate” section of the graph and are a clear outlier compared to the rest of the Premiership.
Nearest rivals The Rangers are edging closer to the rather generic lump of teams with a low average number of passes per sequence of possession and a higher direct speed.
Here are Opta’s definitions for those data points:



Case closed. Slow and ponderous! Next!
Fortunately, data doesn’t really work like that.
Direct Speed – SPFL
It is worth looking at the Team Sequence Style chart for the last three seasons on the Opta Analyst site.
I have summarised the SPFL team trends across the three seasons covering Ange Postecoglou and now Rodgers.

There is a clear trend that the whole league is moving the ball forwards much quicker season over season.
Some teams, including Celtic, moved the ball slower last season, but ALL teams in the SPFL are moving the ball forwards quicker than two seasons ago.
Celtic’s direct speed of 1.7 metres per second this season would have been second quickest of all the teams apart from relegated Dundee in the 2021/22 season.
Here are the Celtic numbers.

Celtic’s speed of forward momentum decreased in Postecoglou’s second season – would we call that “slow and ponderous”?
It has increased 16% this season albeit in relative terms, the rest of the league are much more direct.
Long Balls
Is this simply a case of the teams adopting even more hoof ball styles of play?
Here are the trends for the number of long balls attempted as provided by FotMob.

At best the league is largely stable as regards the total number of long balls the club’s attempt.
The league average per team per game was 70 in 2021/22 and remains 70 this season.
Ross County went very direct last season, but this have reverted back to 2021/22 levels and St Mirren have done the reverse. Hibernian have become less long ball orientated the last two seasons.
It is The Rangers who are becoming more long ball orientated with 52 in 2021/22 and 60 average this season.
Celtic averaged 42 under Postecoglou and 47 under Rodgers.
Summary
The “slow and ponderous” trope applied to Rodgers Celtic side is a fallacy. Celtic do, however, remain the least direct side in the Premiership.
Direct does not equate to long balls. Teams are finding ways to move the ball through the lines quicker perhaps with an emphasis on quicker and more athletic players. Theses days are perhaps the death throes, for now (these things are cyclical) of “tiki taka” as trends in football dictate a more direct style. Variations of 3-5-2 are much more common than ten years ago.
Celtic are attempting more earlier and longer passes mainly to try and exploit the pace of Daizen Maeda and Kyogo Furuhashi, and to pre-empt the settling of low block defences.
Their style may not be as pleasing on the eye as the well-rehearsed attacking patterns of arch positionalist Postecoglou.
However, Celtic are becoming a more direct side just not relative to a revolutionary explosion in forward momentum by the rest of the league.