Last season Celtic scored 36 goals from fast breaks – 28% of all goals. Celtic’s 36 fast break goals came from 121 shots – 30% of fast break shots resulted in goals.
Their opponents scored 15 from fast breaks, also 28% of goals conceded. 46 shots came from fast breaks meaning 33% of opponents fast break shots resulted in goals against Celtic.
Fast breaks are highly effective then and pressing is the defensive technique that often results in such situations.
Pressing is all the rage, with Rodgers talking about pace, intensity and aggression in winning the ball back quickly. The transition – winning back the ball and then quickly breaking against a defence that is not set remains a potent weapon as the statistics above illustrate.
How to measure pressing effectiveness using match event data?
Team Pressing
There is no direct pressing stat. However, we can infer pressing effectiveness by looking at how disruptive a team’s defence is to the opposition passing. I calculate Passes Per Defensive Action (PPDA). This calculates the number of passes allowed on average for each tackle, interception, foul. The more passes allowed, either the press is less effective OR the team style maybe to sit back and defend deeper – i.e. a lack of pressing attempts as opposed to ineffective pressing.
I mapped PPDA both for and against Celtic versus all 20 opponents played last season plus Alashkert.

The teams at the top are the teams least effective in stopping Celtic passing the ball. No surprises to see Brechin City, Greenock Morton and Linfield there. Although all are behind Hamilton Academical!
The further left the more disruptive Celtic are to the opponents passing game. It is interesting to note that Celtic disrupt all Scottish teams quite equally. Hibernian managed the most passes per Celtic defensive action (3.31) but no Scottish team got near 4 nor less than 2.
Note that Alashkert’s (highlighted yellow) pressing performance is equivalent to the better Scottish teams in terms of restricting Celtic. But Celtic were able to restrict the Armenian’s game in line with Scottish opponents.
You can see that the European opponents from last season were all able to complete more passes per Celtic defensive action than any Scottish team. There may be something to say here about better technique in passing and control.
The three Champions League opponents (Anderlecht, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain) are miles ahead of the Scottish teams not so much in restricting Celtic but in beating Celtic’s defensive actions. Paris Saint-Germain managed over 9 passes per Celtic defensive action. It is frustrating to observe Zenit St. Petersburg were closer to FC Astana than even Anderlecht.
Note also that potential Second Qualifying Round opponents Rosenborg are shown highlighted in yellow. They managed to complete more passes against Celtic per defensive action that any Scottish team. However, Celtic were able to complete nearly 10 passes per defensive action against them – same as Kilmarnock.
I think this chart passes the “sensibleness” test and plot positions correlate quite well with our perceptions of overall ability of the opponents. It doesn't explicitly measure pressing but is a good indicator of defensive effectiveness in restricting opponents.
It further supports the notion that our early Champions League Qualifying opponents are like decent Scottish opposition.