Where Celtic let Scottish Cup semi-final slip away

While not at their scintillating best, Greg Taylor's deflected goal had put Celtic in the driving seat against Glasgow rivals Rangers.

Cameron Carter-Vickers hit the bar with a chance to put the Hoops 2-0 up before Scott Arfield's leveller sent the match to extra time, where a Carl Starfelt own goal proved the difference as Giovanni van Bronckhorst's Light Blues booked a place in the season showpiece against Hearts.

Ange Postecoglou made one change to the starting line-up, with the injured Giorgos Giakoumakis dropping out with Liel Abada taking his spot and Daizen Maeda playing through the middle.

Here, The Celtic Way rounds up some of the key WyScout data from Hampden to give you a match report experience like no other.

xG/trendline

While it was far from vintage Celtic, they still finished the match with the higher xG value. Both sides manufactured seven opportunities which WyScout attributed as 0.10 xG or above.

The trendline reflects the close-run nature of the opening half as well as the spurt of dominance Celtic enjoyed after scoring.

The Hoops may have upped their production after half-time but neither side was able to create much of note in the extra period. It is, however, worth noting the own-goal winner is not included in the Rangers total due to the fact it wasn't technically a shot.

Shots

Celtic's shot map is actually... OK. They managed 13 attempts in the Rangers area and the majority were from decent central locations. Of their 21 total shots, however, only two hit the target with 10 going wide, one hitting the bar and eight getting blocked. Jon McLaughlin made one save all afternoon.

Cameron Carter-Vickers had the game's best chance with his crossbar-testing effort while Kemar Roofe's 33rd-minute header was rated Rangers' best chance.

That was one of 18 shots the Light Blues got off. They managed three on target, with 10 going wide, one off the post and four blocked. Nine of their shots came inside the Celtic area, with Joe Hart making two saves on the day.

Possession and passing networks

The passing networks above give a flavour of how the teams shaped up and the areas in which they concentrated their passing play most. The narrow positioning of the two Celtic wingers can only partially be explained by interchanging flanks.

Interestingly, Celtic were still more measurably more threatening through the middle even though it was the least utilised avenue of attack. Rangers, unsurprisingly, were least threatening through the central areas concentrating as they were on spoiling as opposed to creating.

READ MORE: Celtic, Bobby Madden and Scottish football's definition of mutually exclusive

Once again playing fewer overall passes at a relatively poor accuracy of 79 per cent, Celtic also played 14 fewer forward passes. They did not, however, pass backwards as often (72 v 87) as Rangers nor did they go long quite as much (48 v 76). Not in the graphic below is that Van Bronckhorst's side attempted 12 through passes to Celtic's one.

Where the Hoops attacking struggles show again is in what they did with the ball during their possessions. Celtic had one more possession than Rangers despite ceding 56 per cent of the overall game and a full seven minutes of pure possession time to the Light Blues. In the context of attacking intent, however, Celtic reached the opposition half just over half of the time while Rangers did it 61 per cent of their possessions. Neither side, it must be said, had much success in penetrating the penalty area in any case.

In terms of individuals, no Celt played more than one key pass while Jota's nine cross attempts accounted for 36 per cent of the team's total. At the other end, Rangers were again made to throw in almost 40 crosses although this time both of their goals came from such wide play.

Pressing

For PPDA, remember the lower the number the more effective a team's high press. 

The perception of Celtic's pressing game at Hampden was one of incoherence. Kyogo and Maeda were spotted a couple of times gesturing to the rest of the side in a way that suggested either a pressing trigger had been ignored or missed. It seemed they just weren’t quite clicking in that sense.

The numbers back up that discombobulation. Celtic’s average PPDA against domestic opponents is around 6.8 – against Rangers it was 13.1. Specifically telling is that it reached lows of 43 in the first half and 65 after the break for a second-half-and-extra-time PPDA of 20.5. Rangers, in stark contrast, registered 6.2 overall and actually improved in the second 45 and extra time with an impressive 4.3.

Duels and defending

The recoveries and duels maps below indicate where on the pitch the most intense battles were fought:

Of interest is the combined second half and extra time map, which demonstrates the pressure Celtic had to soak up later in the game with very few actions in the Rangers final third.

Individually, Carl Starfelt racked up a team-high eight defensive duels although Reo Hatate (71 per cent) took the mantle for the highest percentage won of all Celts who competed in more than one defensive duel.

Starfelt also recorded the most recoveries (22, one off Borna Barisic's match-high amount) and the most aerial duels in the team (seven, albeit from 13 attempts). His defensive partner Cameron Carter-Vickers, meanwhile, turned in a poor 29 per cent aerial success rate which was a full 30 per cent below his average across the last five matches.

Elsewhere, dovetailing well with Celtic's loose ball duel success rate was their amount of interceptions. Starfelt (12), Taylor (seven), Maeda (seven) and Juranovic (six) led the way as six Celts made five or more, double that of Rangers. When it came to clearances, Starfelt again recorded the most with 10.