The 'ghost' in Ange Postecoglou's Celtic machine

Indeed, his contribution that day may have seemed sparse, even by his standards:

The truth is, though, that six possession events tell us as much about the limitations of on-ball data as it does about the strengths and contribution of Kyogo himself.

You might think ‘what use is a striker who is never on the ball and has no shots and creates no chances?’

Yet Kyogo utterly changed the direction of the match on 38 minutes by pressurising Charles Dunne to such an extent he forced a short backpass. He then had the speed, strength and anticipation to nip in front of the centre-back, forcing him to be hauled down.

This resulted in a red card for the Saints defender and Celtic suddenly faced 10 men against which to claw back a 0-1 deficit.

Also, what value can we attribute to the many runs off the ball the striker made without ever receiving a pass? What level of mental and physical fatigue did he put into the heads and legs of the St Mirren defence with his constant off-ball running?

St Mirren only had around 20 per cent of the ball when Kyogo was on the pitch and he only completed five pressures but, again, this forces the opposition to rush; to think and act quicker and so contributing to later fatigue.

Season 22-23

If we look at his radar for this season from StatsBomb, we can see a highly specific set of skills:

He is in the top 10 per cent for xG total, xG per shot, total shots and number of times he turns the ball over. A highly specialised skillset – but does this level of specialism allow him to be more efficient?

That is a tricky question as efficiency can have many definitions and begs the question: what are the managerial instructions and team style?

Striker efficiency

Firstly, let us try to fathom efficiency. Here are recent strikers ranked in terms of shot accuracy – that is, the percentage of their shots that hit the target.

Not bad – he’s third best by this with 47 per cent of all shots hitting the target (51 per cent last season).

Next, we’ll’ consider conversion rates. Firstly, the percentage of shots that are on target that result in goals:

A remarkable 65 per cent of Kyogo’s shots that are on target result in goals. This is up from 59 per cent last season. Only Albian Ajeti splits his contributions – highlighting what a useful striker he could have been in Ange Postecoglou’s system if only the off-the-ball aspects of his game were up to scratch.

The range is oddly wide with 2017-18 Moussa Dembele only scoring from 26 per cent of his shots on target. We can dig into this later.

If we consider goals resulting from all shots, we get:

Equally remarkably, Kyogo is scoring from 30 per cent of all shots he takes. That is more than double the rate of the least efficient strike rates. Anything near 20 per cent can be considered good, so Kyogo’s performance here is exceptional. For context, Erling Haaland of Manchester City was converting at 33 per cent earlier in the season during his hot scoring streak in the English Premier League.

Player and team style

There is no doubt, then, that Kyogo is exceptionally clinical in scoring compared to the number of shots he gets and without considering the other facets of striker play.

But how do we consider the impact of team style and managerial instruction versus the individual characteristics of the players?

Firstly, let’s look at possessions per scoring contribution. This is the number of on-ball possession events the strikers are involved in per goal scored or assist provided.

We know that Kyogo and Giorgos Giakoumakis are relatively uninvolved in build-up play compared to strikers in recent times and also that they contribute far fewer assisting passes therefore their overall scoring contributions may be lower.

However, we can see that the two recent strikers have the lowest number of minutes between each scoring contribution. Indeed, Kyogo needs only 16 possessions between goals compared to 61 for Leigh Griffiths in the 2018-19 season.

By this view we start to see players’ contributions bundled close to each other, indicating individual style is a factor. Yet there aren’t many who would claim that Giakoumakis, for instance, was a better Celtic striker than Odsonne Edouard.

However, we need to consider the possibility that Giakoumakis – as technically limited as he was – may have been more effectively deployed than Edouard even if his individual attributes in the wider sense were inferior.

Now let’s look at the percentage of shots each striker takes within the opposition box:

This view almost totally aligns by player – meaning it is down to the characteristics of that individual to take shots from certain locations. Celtic’s most recent strikers take more than 90 per cent of their shots from inside the opposition box.

Of course, the manager has selected players who play that way – Griffiths did not last long in the Postecoglou revolution although that was probably as much for non-footballing reasons as anything else.

Finally, we have a metric called final-third effectiveness. This expresses the percentage of occasions each player has the ball in the final third of the pitch and manages to either get a shot away, set up a chance, win a corner or otherwise keep possession instead of losing the ball without achieving a meaningful attacking action.

Again we see the more recent strikers well above 50 per cent in terms of generating meaningful attacking output in the final third versus losing the ball. Griffiths does better here given his relatively uncomplicated and forward-thinking approach. Edouard does not score as well as he often he tried quite complicated actions such as dribbles or difficult creative passes.

Summary

By any measure, Kyogo is an incredibly effective striker but we cannot divorce that from the team’s style of play and the instructions given to the players by the manager.

What I wanted to illustrate by using these various metrics is that it is the combination of player attributes, team style and managerial instruction that generates an environment whereby high efficiency is evidenced in the numbers.

That is why debates about who the ‘best’ strikers is can be simplistic. How were they deployed? What job were they asked to do? How did they perform versus the managers expectations?

I would not claim Kyogo is the best striker Celtic have had since *insert year of your choosing here* but I would claim that he is incredibly efficient operating within a coherent team style and following his manager’s instructions to the letter.

He is not expected to get involved in much play but is expected to be in the box in good, central positions to be on the end of high-quality chances.

I will leave you with the average xG per shot from this population of strikers:

Celtic have a manager and style of play that requires the strikers to get into the highest-probability scoring positions and then finish from there. It makes sense.

And in Kyogo they have someone able and willing to do the job asked of him with all the sacrifices to overall involvement that this entails.

It is, fundamentally, another indicator of coherence. Wouldn’t we all like that in our work?