Elhamed's Debut
“My kingdom for a right back!”. Celtic Park witnessed the debut of erstwhile centre back cum right back Elhamed in the romp over St Johnstone.
A mixture of curiosity and delight greeted the first overlap down the right. It was a day for attacking after all. His debut ended with a dead leg injury on 51 minutes, however.
Attacking Threat
As there wasn’t a whole lot of defending to do (St Johnstone mustered one long range shot) let’s start with what was offered in the final third.
Elhamed is similarly sized to Lustig and has the same upright, rather stiff, gait. However, it was very evident that speedy overlapping runs was the point where those similarities ended. Forrest is not used to having he full back bomb past him on the outside, and it seemed to surprise the Saints as well.
The first chance of the match on 4 minutes saw the right sided pair combine for Elhamed to set up Edouard for a shot blocked by Vihmann.
In the 8th minute he found Christie in the box for another good chance. What was noticeable was the Tierney-esque ability to cut the ball back on the ground and accurately rather than fling variable height crosses into the general area. Most welcome.
By half time Elhamed had served up three passes into the Danger Zone – i.e. the centre of the opposition box. For context, the only player to average more than one such pass per 90m in the squad last season was Griffiths (2.26). The vast majority of his Danger Zone passes were from corners though, not open play.
Three chances created by half time, all into the middle of the box yielded no goals. But Forrest will surely not fail again to score from 7 shots as here. Elhamed ended with an Expected Assist of 0.623, the second highest after Christie (inevitably).
He had no shots but lost possession in the final third 4 times. Only Christie, Edouard and Bolingoli lost more. Indeed, he had a couple of moments of poor control which may be understandable due to first game nerves.
Overall, he had possession in the box 3 times, only Forrest and Edouard exceeding that.
Ball Progression
It will be a wonderful if Elhamed can emulate Lustig’s range of passing and ability to break opposition lines. There was scant evidence of that, however.
Mostly conservative in his passing he completed 29 at 77% completion, low, but most of his passes were attacking ones.
He did not complete any Pack Passes that take opponents out the game, and that will be limiting for Celtic going forward. The Bitton experiment at centre back partially mitigates this but will (hopefully) not be the norm in future.
Overlapping runs great, but Celtic need more penetrative forward passing from full back.
He did manage to complete more progressive runs than his full back partner, Bolingoli, with 4.
Defending
There wasn’t too much of this as mentioned. Many of his challenges were in the St Johnstone half.
He was successful with 4 challenges and intercepts and lost out on 5. He won and lost possession 3 times each from defensive actions.
As a centre back for most of the last two years he unsurprisingly won 3 out of 4 aerial challenges.
He recovered the ball 4 times, easily the lowest rate amongst the defenders.
Otherwise there was precious little to evidence his defensive capabilities.
Summary
Elhamed’s ability to hit the by-line and cut back accurate centrally positioned passes was a lovely surprise. He deserved at least one assist. His pace and ability to bring the ball forward on the run will be an asset.
He was not tested defensively, and the main area for development will be to try and produce more accurate forward passes that will take out the first defensive lines.
Celtic looked better balanced with the threat he offered. However, Celtic were still left-side dominant. By half time, Bolingoli had completed 41 passes to 17 by the Israeli.
Becoming more balanced through greater support for Forrest will be a key to Celtic being less predictable than the last two seasons.
More to come, of course, but an interesting start.