Poor Lonely Celtic Strikers

Just how isolated are Celtic strikers?

One of the aspects of being a nerd is the excitement one gets when exploring questions and attempting to find out whether our intuitions are accurate or not. Despite my card carrying status as a spreadsheet shagger, I am a big believer in human intuition and its importance to critical thinking and problem solving.

However, we are all wired to endure cognitive traps, which is where measurement and hypothesis testing enter the picture.

The topic in this column is examining how involved, or as many supporters may sense, not involved, Celtic strikers are in how the team plays these days. I will leave potential analytical conclusions until the end of the column, but want to start with simple contextual measurement.

The graphic shows the average passes received and made for each striker’s league campaign in each respective season. We can see the relative decline in absolute receipts and passes since the arrival of Ange Postecoglou, with Adam Idah’s current season being a bit of a throwback.