Why Celtic deserved to win the Scottish Cup ahead of Rangers

Celtic’s championship win, delivering guaranteed expanded Champions League football, further exacerbates the financial gulf between Glasgow’s two biggest clubs. The cup final victory is more about who is sent away happier for the summer.

Not all reviews of Saturday’s game have been as positive, however. One match report said: “But the frustration for Rangers as they look back on Saturday’s clash is that for the first time in over a year, they dominated their rivals in open play. Even that, though was not enough to derail Brendan Rodgers’ double drive as Celtic soaked up 89 minutes of Gers pressure before lashing out to inflict the decisive blow.”

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Another post-game article proclaimed that Rangers had “Won the battle but lost the war”. The wartime analogies gave way to incredulous claims as they declared “(Rangers) were the better team throughout Saturday’s Scottish Cup Final”. All his heroes in blue were “head and shoulders above anything Celtic could muster”.

Warming to the theme, manager Phillippe Clement was a “star performer in the tactical jousting with Brendan Rodgers”. Even the Rangers manager claimed post-match that “Everyone was saying we are the better team”.

Such unanimity of post-game positioning is a feature of Scottish reportage but here we turn to cold, hard numbers to assess whether Celtic should have added the “Better Team On The Day” Trophy to the world’s oldest cup. The public data vendors, and indeed StatsBomb, give the Scottish Cup scant data coverage and so it is back to the ‘Celtic By Numbers’ spreadsheet for this one.

Stat snap

Let’s start with the basic summary stat snap. The key metrics from the day.

Celtic dominated the possession, completing nearly double the number of passes than their direct ball-orientated opponents. The total expected goals was nearer double in Celtic’s favour as well – 1.18 compared to 0.67. Rangers had more goal attempts and created more chances.

Each goalkeeper made three saves, but Celtic had the ball in their opponent's box 18 times to 13. The overall packing score is insightful as it covers all forward passes, dribbles, turnovers and recoveries where opponents are taken out of the game. Celtic had the higher packing score as a team 348-318. Another moral Rangers victory is looking shaky, then.

Expected goals

Only one of Celtic’s seven shots were from outside the box whereas for Rangers it was 50-50 shots inside and outside the area. Consequently, they did not generate high xG from many of their efforts. A Cyriel Dessers effort in the 25th minute was arguably their best.

Celtic’s - and the game's - only big chance came in the final minutes as Jack Butland could only parry Paulo Bernardo's swerving shot (Celtic’s only effort from outside the area) into the path of an alert Adam Idah for a close-range finish. The xG momentum bar was thus:

Only in the 10-minute segment between the 21st and 30th minutes did Rangers generate a higher xG than the champions.

We were told that Rangers dominated the second half and there was a flurry of corners around the 75th minute. Yet, for such a dominant team, they failed to register a single shot from the 55th to the 83rd minute. Celtic were hardly an attacking force in this period, and the game strongly resembled both the 1980 and 1989 finals both won 1-0 by Celtic in tight, nervy, scrappy matches.

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Celtic generated a higher xG in five-time segments to one by their opponents. Rodgers’ side were patient and probing, and not at all fluent in the final third. The score as regards losing the ball in the opponent's final third without creating danger was 35 times by Celtic and 33 by Rangers.

But, “89 minutes of pressure”.

Packing

The packing momentum does not include turnovers and recoveries and focuses on ball progression.

This shows Celtic dominated the early moments before it settled down into a fairly even-handed contest. However, Celtic achieved a higher pack passing/receiving score in seven of the nine time segments. Rangers improved in this regard in the last 20 minutes and that recency bias may have exercised some commentators.

The top five pack passers were:

1. Liam Scales – 93
2. Cameron Carter-Vickers – 84
3. Callum McGregor – 60
4. James Tavernier – 47
5. Alistair Johnston – 40.

Only one Rangers player in the top five.

Cumulative game performance state

If we consider how xG and packing scores accumulated throughout the 90 minutes we get:

The green and blue bars are the cumulative packing scores, and the orange and red bars are the cumulative xG.

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This highlights that Celtic were largely the dominant team throughout the match and whilst no supporter would claim this was a coherent performance, there can surely be no complaints based on the performance data, that the “Better Team Won on The Day” Trophy should accompany the silverware to Celtic Park.

That won’t be the case, of course, but that all adds to the rich tapestry. Happy summer!