Life In The Danger Zone
Logic (and expected goals) tells us the closer you are to goal and more central, the better the chance of scoring generally. Which players are giving themselves the best chance to score?
Shots In The Box
Shooting from inside the box is usually better than shooting outside in terms of probability of scoring. Also, just having possession in the box is good as any foul should result in a penalty.
Looking at the midfielders and strikers, here is the shot % for in box shots:
We have broadly three groups.
The >70%-ers
Edouard, Forrest, Sinclair and Dembele all take more than 70% of their shots inside the box. Star pupils!
The 40-50%-ers
Griffiths, Roberts, McGregor, Rogic and Hayes mix it up and broadly take as many shots inside the box as outside Can do better!
The <40%-ers
Armstrong and Ntcham select to shoot outside the box 66% and 84% of the time respectively. Now we all like a top corner screamer. Partly because they are rare. And they are rare because they are really difficult and unlikely. The remedials.
The Danger Zone
The optimal spot to shoot, the real danger zone or red zone, is central to the goal no further than the edge of the box. Shoot from this position and your probabilities of scoring start to get nearer the 40% and above mark. Number of defenders in the way and the height of the ball and other factors are clearly important. But broadly, the Danger Zone operators are:
This shows the total number of shots attempted as the green bars, and the % of those shots that were from the Danger Zone as the orange line.
Dembele on 60% is just in front of Edouard on 59%. They are the only players who take more than 50% of their shots from this zone. They went to a different French football school to Ntcham however as only 13% of his shots are from the sweet spot.
Shot variety is fine and it’s all about decision making. But as a rule, I’d like to see Griffiths (and even Sinclair) as senior strikers get nearer the 50% mark.
We know Rogic, Armstrong and Ntcham love the long shot but 1 in 5 efforts from outside the Danger Zone is not going to yield many goals unless you have a purple patch like Armstrong did last season. For sure there is a balance between not being predictable and varying the shots to keep the opposition guessing. But there is also simple maths and physics!
Big Chances
A Big Chance is defined by Opta as “A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score usually in a one-on-one scenario or from very close range.”
They are quite rare. Celtic had 73 including penalties and 64 without. The opposition had 32 of which 4 were penalties.
So, you are looking at 1-2 per match.
Celtic converted 31 out of 73 Big Chances into goals – which is why you should freely mock the pundits who claim, “he must score”. It’s as if they never played the game. 42% of Celtic ‘s Big Chances resulted in goals.
In the opening league game of the season at home to Heart of Midlothian and in the League Cup Semi Final against Hibernian Celtic scored 3 goals from Big Chances, the season high. The most created in one game is 5. This happened at home to Linfield in the Champions League Qualifier, and in December away at Hibernian in the 2-2 draw.
Astana (away) and Bayern Munich (away) both created 3 Big Chances in the same game, the season high by the opposition. Astana in the same game were the only side to score from 2 of them. 31% of Big Chances against came in Europe - 23% of the games.
Sinclair led the way with 17 Big Chances and Dembele 15. No one else made double figures with Griffiths on 9 the next highest.
But of course we need to look at the per 90m number to remove the differences of time on the pitch as a factor. Per 90m Big Chances are:
The young French strikers once again are those getting into the best positions to score most often. They both average 1 Big Chance every two games. The most disappointing is probably Forrest who only gets a Big Chance every 25 games!
Summary
We’ve looked at shot selection in terms of taking efforts inside the box or out and analysed who is taking shots from that central Danger Zone central and close to goal. Finally, we considered who is getting into position to be on the end of Big Chances.
All of this provides an insight into decision making in terms of on field positioning and when to shoot with a view to maximising scoring opportunities.
The more we can have Edouard and Dembele on the pitch, the more higher quality opportunities I believe Celtic will create.