Attack the best form of defence?
Weekly round-upPosted by Martyn Sun, July 19, 2009 17:24:54The stats don't always tell THE whole story, but they do tell A story.
It is no secret that Celtic scored less goals and shipped far more under Gordon Strachan's Celtic than in the five years previous. That can be clearly seen here http://www.celticstats.co.uk/record.html
Whether that is down to the manager, resources, quality of opposition etc is not for the statistics to decide. What is clear though, is that the fans will demand that Tony Mowbray's Celtic improves on the attacking football that Celtic supporters want to see. Strachan's cautious approach appears to have cost Celtic on a number of occasions, especially away from home. The amount of goals conceded away from home in the SPL roughly doubled on average in the past 4 years compared to the O'Neill years beforehand.
Celtic fans will not demand that this changes, instead they will demand that Celtic return to attacking teams home and away and trying to win football matches, not match up to sides who are far inferior. Strachan's Celtic threw away too many leads, O'Neill's sides rarely looked back after taking the lead. Mowbray's team will be expected to gun down oppositions sides in the SPL and not hide from their duties to play for 90mins.
Celtic's strikers will look to get more chances and score more goals, it is clear from the stats that Celtic have not been creating enough chances and quite frankly opposition goalkeepers have been kept far too quiet. Scott McDonald is capable of scoring goals, and if he is being fed chance after chance he will score a lot of goals. He was poor last season yet still scored 19 goals, hopefully he can return to the 30+ form that we know he is capable of (31 in 2007/08).
What happens in the Celtic defence will be interesting but it will not provide the key to what happens this season. Mogga believes that goals win games and entertaining the fans spurs on the players and strikes fear into the opposition. The stats appear to back him up. We'll all find out soon enough.
Keep up with all the stats and get the answers to the questions that get asked 20 times a day on the internet forums. The chance are that the answer is right here at www.celticstats.co.uk
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