The Power of Recovery

When I started Celtic By Numbers the data I collected was very basic. Mainly defensive actions and passing and shot data but no xG.

It has developed over the years as you learn more techniques and best practise.

Now I rarely add “new” data points a) because it’s a real pain to do and b) because there are so many now that all the obvious capturable data is accounted for.

However, there is an element of Packing data I have not hitherto captured.

A reminder – Packing assigns a score when you pass, receive or dribble past opponents whilst moving the ball forwards. The score depends on the number of opponents bypassed (or packed) and their position – you get more points for defenders.

Pack Recovery

If a player gives the ball away, or on the other side, recovers a loose pass or intercepts it, if there are then members of your team on the “wrong side” of the ball (i.e. they are now ahead of the ball relative to their own goal) they can also be said to have been packed.

Here are a couple of examples from Sunday.

Coulson drives inside for Aberdeen and attempts a pass that O’Riley anticipates and intercepts. Aberdeen now has three players wrong side of the ball – circled.

O’Riley has Packed 3 players due to this recovery.

Pack Turnover

Conversely, here on 32 minutes, Hatate plays a loose pass backwards leading to Aberdeen recovering the ball. This leaves five Celtic players ahead of the ball.

Hatate would get a negative Packing score based on this turnover.

Packing Scores vs Aberdeen

What does Sunday’s data tell us about Celtic players?

Firstly, here are the Pack Recovery stats:

Oh. Another stat that makes O’Riley look good. Well, gosh darn.

I’d expect central midfielder to be tops on this as with the packing passing stats.

This may also be a metric that helps to explain Juranovic’s utility over Ralston. If anything, Ralston’s attacking data is better. However, Juranovic’s speed and anticipation will be rewarded by this metric.

On the other side, let’s look at Turnovers.

If this was golf, it would look great for Hatate. But it isn’t.

From 4 turnovers his Packing Score took a hefty -29 hit.

You don’t really want to see defenders having any of these as if a defender turns the ball over, generally a lot of advanced players are now out the game.

This is a good proxy for vision, anticipation, agility, positioning, decision making.

As always, this will become a pattern after about 10 matches.