Alashkert, Whit They Like?
Welcome back to Celtic By Numbers for the new season. The first games’ data is in the can. With Celtic sent to hottest Armenia for unknown reasons of geographical split, what standard of opposition did Alashkert present?
On the face of it Alashkert seemed a club the size of the standard of opposition Celtic are used to facing at this stage. With a ground that holds 6000 people and average attendances in the hundreds, the Armenians resembled, by that criteria, the part-time opponents from Iceland and Ireland. Using match data, I have shown that Linfield, for example, performed to about the same level as when Celtic played Albion Rovers in the Scottish Cup (this is data from away games for Celtic):
So, Scottish League One level at best?
But Alashkert, despite their poor support, are apparently backed with money from an Armenian Travel Agency company. Hence a sprinkling of Serbian, Brazilian (thanks in part to a tie up with Botafogo) and 1 Mexican player in their squad. Not part-time Scottish League One then.
Whilst it was a comfortable win in the end for Celtic, with late goals and impressive fitness levels (Ajer running the length of the park in the last minute to facilitate the 3rd goal!) providing an excellent end to the match, slips by Simunovic and Hendry in each half at 0-0 and 1-0 could have led to a more uncomfortable night.
Celtic had 62% of the possession but the respective xG was only 1.234 to 0.541. Celtic won 7-4 on shots on target and 7-4 on shots inside the box. The Hoops created 14 chances to 8 and had possession in the opposition box 18 time to 7. The two aforementioned errors accounted for half of Alashkert’s Expected Goals, the remaining coming from long range shots.
What was high was Total Team Impect of 381 – basically Celtic found it easy to play through Alashkert. Celtic achieved a similar score against Brechin City last season. This was due to two main factors.
Alashkert did not pressing aggressively but neither did they maintain deep nor narrow defensive spacing. 2.
The other factor was the pace of the Celtic forward players and their ability to receive the ball by finding space. Edouard was only involved 3% of the time and Dembele 4% they both only completed 11 passes. Yet 8 times Dembele was found by passes taking out defenders and Edouard 10 times. Tierney was found 13 times high wide left with such passes. Celtic were able to find their forwards easily.
12% of Celtic’s passes took out opponents – something achieved 24 times last season in 61 games.
Celtic did not create many good quality chances – the finishing for all 3 goals was excellent but none were Big Chances. Their xG of 1.234 was low by last seasons average of 2.004. Celtic had similar xG’s beating both Aberdeen (2-0) and The Rangers (3-2) away last season.
14 chances created is 1 less than Celtic’s 17/18 average.
What was below average from Alashkert was their own ability to create. They bypassed only 2 Celtic defenders all season – the previous season average is 11. Linfield managed 2, Aberdeen averaged 6 and Bayern Munich sauntered past 42 in the 0-3 defeat.
Alashkert defended doggedly themselves, winning possession back 30 times. They out tackled Celtic winning 53% of all challenges whilst committing 15 fouls.
Overall Alashkert’s numbers are similar to that seen when Celtic play a decent mid table Scottish Premier side. That in itself is a sterner test that had they been playing Icelandic, Irish or Welsh opposition. More difficult tests undoubtedly await.
(As a final aside it was remarkable that from 25 attempts on goal from both sides, not one was a header! I’m still in World Cup set piece mode. In that respect at least, the Armenians were a very un-Scottish side.)