Analysis Corner: Weekend talking points
By Dougie Wright (@dougie_analysis)
Weekend talking points
This weekend, Pedro Caixinha started his Rangers career with a home victory over Hamilton. Interestingly, Rangers took only ten shots at goal, which is their joint lowest at Ibrox all season. I doubt their fans will really care though, as this was the first time Rangers had hit four goals on league duty since they were in the Championship.
On a totally unrelated note, this was also the first game that Rangers didn’t try a shot from outside of the box, with all but one strike coming from the “danger zone”- the central channel of the penalty area. Quality beats quantity…who knew?
At the other end of the park, they were equally impressive, keeping their first clean sheet in six games on league duty at Ibrox. As good as Rangers were, it must be noted that Hamilton were pretty dreadful too. It took their outfield players over four minutes to string a pass together, and the lack of striker really showed: it is a damning indictment of Martin Canning’s side that they only managed five touches in the box throughout the ninety minutes at Ibrox.
Kilmarnock are weird.
Down the M77, they are doing their best to go against convention. Up until January, they had relied on Souleymane Coulibaly scoring all sorts of bizarre goals. Indeed, at the time of his departure, the Ivorian had scored half of Killie’s sixteen goals this season.
It’s fair to say that Lee Clark engaged in a bit of wheeling and dealing in January, signing eight new players for the first team, massively restructuring the team before leaving a few weeks later. When he left mid- February, Kilmarnock were left without a manager, without their top scorer, and with the guts of a whole new team to take them away from the relegation zone.
Lo and behold, that’s exactly what’s happened.
They’ve lost just twice in the eight matches they’ve played in 2017. Contrast that with the five losses in their last eight games of 2016, and it’s clear that their weird and wonderful January seems to have made a difference.
Most of this seems to come from defence, with Killie cutting their goals conceded per game from 1.6 to 1 since the turn of the year.
Something seems to have clicked at Rugby Park. With games against Celtic, Rangers and Hearts to come, they probably won’t make the top six- however Lee McCulloch looks to be doing enough to ensure that his side won’t be drawn into the relegation places.
As for Celtic
A 2-1 win over Dundee now has them within three points of the title. Brendan Rodgers’ side have actually found the Dark Blues the most difficult team in the league to score against this season:
Nevertheless, it is testament to the strength in depth at Celtic that they have goalscorers all over the field, and Stuart Armstrong made it three goals in two games from midfield to earn Celtic a deserved three points.
As much as a lot of the focus has been on the lack of a challenge to Celtic this season, it’s worth recognizing that this isn’t just any old Celtic side. Granted, they will end up champions yet again, but the manner which they have achieved this year’s crown shouldn’t be dismissed.
Over the past decade, no Celtic team has come close to this sort of ruthlessness. Indeed, if you look at every Celtic team after twenty-nine games since 2007, this year’s side are five points ahead of any other team from these ten seasons.
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