Celtic players whose goals have had biggest Premiership impact

Celtic go into their final stretch of matches sitting about as pretty as can be.

They are nine points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership, have the League Cup trophy in the cabinet again and are two games away from lifting the Scottish Cup in what would be a historic eighth treble.

A large part of their irresistibly consistent Premiership form this season has been their ability to score goals.

Last campaign brought 92 goals – a hefty return and an average of 2.42 per league game. This term, they already have 93 in just 29 matches for a per match average of 3.2.

Every goal, of course, counts the same in the end – but that doesn’t mean they’re actually all created equal.

Context matters. A goal’s value does add just ‘1’ to the scoreboard, it’s true, but the fifth in a 7-0 win is never going to be as important as the only goal in a 1-0 victory or even the equaliser in a 2-2 draw.

So whose goals have ‘mattered’ the most this league season? Who, to put it another way, has found the net when Celtic have needed it and might be most likely to do so again in the coming weeks as the pressure builds?

To figure it out we’re going to employ the ‘game-state’ filter that our friends at StatsBomb include in their wide-ranging dataset to consider the Hoops’ goalscorers in the context of, for what of a better term, pressure.

Let’s start, though, with the basics: a goals breakdown.

Overall 19 different players have hit the net for Celtic this league season, ranging from top scorer Kyogo Furuhashi (20) to recent signing Alistair Johnston (1). Here is the full list:

Now the image below is what Celtic’s 93 league goals look like as a shot map.

The official breakdown of the 93 is as follows:

• 68 from open play (exc. own goals)
• 8 from right corners
• 5 from left corners
• 4 penalties
• 4 own goals
• 2 from indirect free-kicks
• 1 from direct free-kick
• 1 from a throw-in

Next comes the game-state filter. A total of 51 out of the 93 can be classified as ‘pile-on’ goals. In other words contributions that, although they might still have been important in a match situation in terms of settling nerves or stopping an opponent’s momentum, were ultimately irrelevant to the final result.

Those 51 goals are attributed to Kyogo Furuhashi (10); Liel Abada (8); Jota (5); Daizen Maeda (4); Giorgos Giakoumakis (4); Reo Hatate, David Turnbull and Aaron Mooy (all 3); Sead Haksabanovic, Carl Starfelt and James Forrest (all 2); Greg Taylor, Oh Hyeon-gyu, Josip Juranovic, Moritz Jenz and Matt O’Riley (all 1).

Filtering out the ‘pile-on’ goals means we lose Starfelt, O’Riley and Juranovic, with all of their goals technically making no difference to the team’s final results.

Interestingly, three of Celtic’s four scored penalties fall into the pile-on category. All four of the own goals scored in Celtic's favour have been to put them ahead while they were drawing (dishonourable mentions here for Andy Considine, who has actually done it twice this term, as well as Ash Taylor and Ayo Obileye).

This all leaves us with 38 goals for consideration. Given Celtic are so dominant domestically and are in the midst of a lengthy unbeaten run, very rarely have they gone behind in games this season.

When they have they have managed to draw level six times. These six strikes belong to Jota (vs both St Mirren and Hibernian in March), Kyogo (vs Rangers in January), Turnbull (vs Ross County in November), Giakoumakis (vs Hearts in October) and Maeda vs Hearts in March).

For added context, Celtic went on to win all but one of those matches. The outlier is Kyogo’s strike in the January Glasgow Derby, which earned the Hoops their only draw of the league season to date.

So 32 goals have put Celtic ahead in matches so far this campaign. These belong to:

• Kyogo – 9
• Haksabanovic – 3
• Taylor, Maeda, Hatate, Jota, McGregor, Forrest, Abada – all 2
• Oh, Giakoumakis, Welsh, Jenz, Johnston, Mooy – all 1

Overall, then, the final table of goals that either drew Celtic level when they were behind or put them ahead when drawing – what the north Americans like to call ‘clutch’ – looks like this:

A few players stand out here. Kyogo, not just the top scorer but the one who has altered the state of the game in Celtic's favour the most with 10 of his 20 league strikes qualifying as 'clutch'.

Second-top scorer Abada, potentially due to his surplus of sub appearances, has just two such goals in his 10 while conversely Haksabanovic - also often a substitute - has made a telling impact with three of his five goals to date.

A word, too, for the captain in all this. McGregor may only have found the net twice this season but both were to put Celtic ahead. They were both against Aberdeen - the first (and therefore the winner) in the 4-0 victory in February and the first and only goal at Pittodrie in December.

While Celtic are indeed sitting pretty in the league table, there will undoubtedly be some big moments left to come before the green and white ribbons are looked out again and the trophy is in McGregor’s hands come May.

There will be no surprise if those big moments come from a recognisable place.

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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