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Set pieces are increasingly important in professional football, both for the attacking team and the opposition doing their best to defend them.

Of course, the way in which they are executed and utilised differs with each manager and their team of coaches, in order to get optimum results for their club. These can come in the form of crossing the ball into the box to provide an assist, or by going for a goal direct from a free kick.

Managerial great Sir Alex Ferguson once said of Liverpool: "they can play for only five minutes and win the game. They pump the ball into the box and with good set piece delivery they keep you under pressure.” It takes one to know one, however, as Ferguson’s teams utilised this way of scoring to great effect, especially in his tenure as Manchester United manager.

Former manager Ange Postecoglou did understand the importance of the set piece in the make-up of his Celtic side, especially in the season just finished.

He underlined the work of his coach Gavin Strachan in the media, giving him credit for improvements to the team’s set pieces at the start of last season.

READ MORE: Ange Postecoglou's Celtic reign was trending down

He said: “It’s just the natural evolution of the team. Gavin Strachan is in charge of that area and puts a lot of work into it.

“We want to hurt teams in different ways. If they close us down we have to find different ways to score. Gavin puts a lot of work into it and we now have the players to capitalise on it.”

The statistics backed up this praise. When Postecoglou made these comments, Celtic were only four games into the season, but set pieces had made up 40 per cent of their total goals in the Scottish Premiership. This was down to goals from defenders such as Moritz Jenz, Carl Starfelt and Stephen Welsh, who were benefitting from good crosses into the opposition’s box.

Despite this early glut of goals coming from set pieces, Celtic’s xG for this particular way of scoring could be improved upon, though the number did fluctuate up and down throughout last season.

It must be noted that a lot of Celtic’s set-piece opportunities were never truly realised last season, as Postecoglou insisted to his players that the game had to be restarted quickly following a break in play.

 

Indeed, the team’s joint-highest accumulation in this metric came against Dundee United in November, scoring 0.44 set piece xG shortly before the World Cup break. This is surprising, considering that only one of their goals that fixture came from this avenue – the 90th-minute Kyogo Furuhashi goal from a header.

What is even more surprising is that Celtic scored the exact same figure against the same opponents earlier on in the season. However, the score in that game was 9-0 to the visitors, with two goals in this game coming from dead balls.

Celtic’s xG number didn't increase beyond this point in the league campaign, instead dropping at one point to 0.28 against Hearts at home, the lowest figure for this metric.

In terms of league averages for set piece xG last season, Celtic ranked joint-second in the league, finishing on 0.36 alongside Hibernian and Kilmarnock respectively. Rangers finished the season on 0.41 xG for set pieces, the highest in the Premiership.

In terms of full-season totals for this metric, Celtic finished fourth in the league, accumulating 13.84 for the 2022/23 season. They were bettered by Hibs and Kilmarnock on 13.86 and 13.87 respectively, whilst Rangers again were ahead of the pack on a total of 15.66.

READ MORE: A new Celtic manager will reinvigorate Matt O'Riley

Despite the numbers indicating that Rangers are the better set piece takers with regard to xG accumulation, they only scored one more goal than Celtic through this avenue in the league last season. Rangers ended their campaign on 21 for the season, whilst Celtic managed 20.

On the defensive end of dealing with corners and free kicks, however, Celtic were the benchmark. They had the lowest set piece average xG per 90 minutes of any team in the Premiership, with a score of 0.15 xG. Rangers, by comparison, had 0.21 in this metric, indicating that Celtic deals with defending these situations better than anyone else in the league.

This also rings true in the season total set piece xG, as Celtic finished first with an accumulation of 5.72 across the campaign. Again, Rangers finished second in this, with a total figure of 7.99 for last season’s xG, indicating that this is perhaps a contributor to why there is a gap between these two sides at present.

Despite being close with their greatest rivals on set-piece goals, it is not naïve to suggest that Celtic have room to improve in this area. Despite not having the tallest team, especially in the midfield and in wide areas, they do possess some quality in the air that can attack crosses effectively.

Conversely, free-kick takers such as Jota and Matt O’Riley could both contribute more when it comes to direct goals from this position, as they have demonstrated that they have the talent to do so.

With the managerial job currently vacant, Celtic may opt to go for an individual who can adopt more of a focus on getting additional goals from these positions. Making the most of these opportunities can be the difference between a win and dropping points, especially in tight games. Therefore, capitalising on these chances should be a priority for the new manager coming in, whoever they may be.

This piece is an extract from the latest Celtic Digest newsletter, which is emailed out every weekday evening with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from The Celtic Way team.

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