Did Jenz Do Enough To Keep The Shirt?

The misfortune of others (Karl Starfelt not being 100% ready, Stephen Welsh suffering a virus after an excellent season’s opener) gifted Moritz Jens a debut start against Ross County.

The (effective) winning goal was quite the entrance. Memories are made of moments but performance analysis is made up of hundred of wee Excel cells!

So, what say you, little white oblongs of fact?

Defending

Let’s get the bad out the way first.

There was the goal. Iacovitti was being man marked by Jenz and scored. The Staggy pinned the German with his hands and got the jump. In old school language he ragged him physically.

Jenz has to take the initiative and physically match or better his opponent in this circumstance. Referees will rarely penalise the attacker as in most cases each player has a chunk of the other in their hands.

It nearly got worse.

Hiwula-Mayifuila ran through with Jenz last man. His body shape is too square to the forward meaning his reaction time is delayed fractionally when the forward cuts inside and Jenz brings him down on the edge of the area. Luckily there was cover or it could have been a red instead of the yellow issued.

The resulting free kick brought an excellent save out of Joe Hart, his only one of the match.

To counter this there were a couple of very nice last third challenges to win the ball back, one a key save in the box. Jenz lead the team in that regard as he did in wining back possession 5 times from challenges.

His overall Defensive Actions Success Rate score of 70% is not the best and mainly resulted from losing 3 aerial challenges – the quite severe wind a mitigating factor.

Defensively very mixed, then.

Distribution

Jenz was second only to McGregor with 83 completed passes @ 87% successful completion. Jenz was on the ball more than any other Celtic player overall.

That completion rate is low for a centre back – Carter-Vickers averages around 93%. This isn’t necessarily “bad” if the low rate is balanced with many line splitting “Pack” passes.

He completed 6 such passes – the same as Carter-Vickers and Taylor representing 7% of his attempted passes. Of the starting outfield players, that is the lowest % of passes that were line breaking.

Two of his passes led to chances being created from the subsequent pass – i.e. secondary assists.

Where he was highly effective was in carrying the ball through the initial Ross County press. He completed 8 progressive runs – 2 less than Carter-Vickers.

The goal was the memorable moment – a wind assisted bullet header from a post corner cross from Jota. A rare event these days for Celtic fans given the diminutive nature of the squad.

Some chatter about whether he should have received a second yellow card for interacting with the support after the goal. The Yorkshire Whistler clears that up here with his usual explanatory excellence.

Summary

When his passing settles and he gets used to the movements of his colleagues, I believe he’ll present a useful distribution option from the back. He seems comfortable off both feet which helps.

He looks to have decent pace which is important in Celtic’s high defensive line.

There are some basic defending techniques for him to work on, clearly. Even against Ross County, two technical errors were exposed badly.

Was that enough to keep out Starfelt or Welsh? Did he do enough to keep the shirt against Kilmarnock?

I’d say….just.

It’s shaping up to be a fascinating battle to be Carter-Vickers partner.