REVIEW: Borussia Monchengladbach 1 Celtic 1
When Lars Stindl sidefooted a crisp volley past Craig Gordon, it looked as though Celtic were doomed to add to their infamous record of twenty three defeats from twenty five Champions League games outside Parkhead. Aside from Scott Sinclair hitting the post from the edge of the box, Gladbach had overwhelmed their Glaswegian guests with nine shots on goal up to that point.
Review by Dougie Wright (@dougie_analysis)
When Lars Stindl sidefooted a crisp volley past Craig Gordon, it looked as though Celtic were doomed to add to their infamous record of twenty three defeats from twenty five Champions League games outside Parkhead. Aside from Scott Sinclair hitting the post from the edge of the box, Gladbach had overwhelmed their Glaswegian guests with nine shots on goal up to that point. Thankfully for Rodgers' men, that would be the end of Gladbach's scoring, and when Julian Korb recklessly tugged Moussa Dembele in the box, Celtic were able to profit. The red card was enough to extinguish the Gladbach onslaught, and Celtic will quite happily leave Germany with a point. In truth, Gladbach were unfortunate not to have wrapped the game up before Korb's intervention. Take a look at the following shot map. The green dots show where Celtic took their shots from; the black dots show Borussia: ! What's immediately obvious is that Gladbach took more shots in better locations than Celtic. Shot selection is a very important part of football analysis. The rules of thumb are this: any shot taken from outside the area has a roughly one in thirty chance of going in, and from the central channel of the penalty box, it's one in six. This also is why Celtic fans shouldn't be that harsh on Callum McGregor following his late miss. The area he took it from, the outside channel of the penalty box, actually has just a one in eighteen chance of hitting the back of the net. ! The angle is very narrow from this position, especially with Swiss international Yann Sommer in the way. Perhaps if Armstrong (circled) had been a bit wiser to the move, McGregor could have squared it across the box for a simple tap in. Despite only two goals, this was actually a really entertaining game. Both sides sat their defences fairly deep, and employed a holding midfielder to screen. On the other hand, both teams' attacks sat fairly high. This created a vacuum in the centre of the pitch, with possession rapidly changing hands as the teams scurried from one end of the park to the other using fairly direct passing play. In attack, Celtic set up something like this: ! While Brown occasionally forayed forward, there was a clear divide between the attack and the defence. Surprisingly for Hoops fans, right back Cristian Gamboa was actually one of the team's main attacking outlets. Mikael Lustig showed his tactical versatility in being able to shuffle across the backline to cover the space left by the Costa Rican. Look how high up Gamboa is here, just before Dembele won the penalty: ! Throughout this season, Rodgers has relied on left back Kieran Tierney to push forward from the defence, while the right back (usually Lustig) covers. With Tierney's absence, yesterday may have heralded a switch for Celtic, as the attack minded right back Gamboa pushed up, while Tierney's replacement Emilio Izaguirre covered. It will be interesting to see how this tactical shift affects the team going forward. In summary, this was a decent game from Celtic. Their defence pressured Gladbach to the extent that their hosts only managed to get six of their twenty shots on target. If you can limit the quality of your opponents' shots, then you're always in the game, and when Julian Korb took the gun and shot his team in the foot, Celtic's defensive resilience had ensured that they were in place to take advantage. A worthy point.
Review by Dougie Wright For more insight, follow him on Twitter @dougie_analysis