Kilmarnock 0 xG 0.69 Celtic 5 xG 2.88 (Kyogo 7, Jota 35, Jenz 46, Starfelt 76 and Giakoumakis 82) Celtic's passing took a big jump in the last half an hour. Total accurate passes were 490 which was less than the 532 against Ross County last week.
Last season Celtic's touches and possession usually took a dip between 60 and 75 minutes but against Kilmarnock this was the most dominant period with 83%. Total possession was 73% which was less than the 77% possession against Ross County last week.
54% of Celtic's xG came in the 2nd half and that's been the same for all three league games this season and varies to last season where xG was at it's most in the first half.
Celtic scored 3 goals in the first with Kyogo, Jota and Jenz all scoring from 39%, 2% and 19% goal scoring chances with Post Shot xG's of 82%, 48% and 27%. Celtic had 2 other good chances in the first half with Jota and Carter-Vickers having 25% and 21% chances which had 15% and 0% Post Shot xG's.
Celtic scored two in the second half with Starfelt and Giakoumakis scoring from 63% and 17% chances which had 94% and 14% Post Shot xG's. One of the intricacies of xG modelling is that Starfelt got 1.15 xG as his goal with 0.52 for the first shot and 0.63 for the second one. Kyogo also had a 24% chance in the second half but failed to be on target, hitting the woodwork.
Kilmarnock had their best chance after 22 minutes when Lafferty had a 13% chance.
Maeda and Turnbull had 0.51 xA each with Maeda getting two assists. O'Riley created the most chances (4) and had an xA of 0.21.
Joe Hart had the best passing accuracy at 96%. Celtic had 1.57 xG from set plays and that is more than any league game last season and Celtic's 0.144 xG per shot was the most so far this season. Kyogo only had 2 passes the whole game as did Giakoumakis when he replaced him.
Celtic lined up with the same team from the game against Ross County with Hatate still out. Welsh wasn't in the squad but that may have just been due to Jenz and Starfelt being ahead of him in the pecking order.
You can see from the average positions Celtic were very left sided (as normal) but even though Celtic can be very left dominated 50% of the attacks down the right is the third highest including all last season's games. The away defeats to Rangers and Livingston being 51% and 52%. The 24% of attacks down the right versus Kilmarnock was the second lowest including last season with the aforementioned Livingston game being 23%.
Looking at the average positions O'Riley was the most further forward and very central given that he was playing on the right of midfield.
Given the left bias of our play it is worth noting some of Greg Taylor's stats from the game. He had 5 successful dribbles, 69 accurate passes, was fouled 5 times and won 19 duels (15 ground and 4 aerial). All those stats being the most in the match of any player.
In my preview post I did predict Celtic would score 5 goals and have a clean sheet https://www.celtictrends.com/post/kilmarnock-v-celtic-match-preview and I did refrain from predicting more goals in the first half given my losing record on this from the first two games. Ironically that actually happening today :)
This was the first time Celtic scored 5 goals away from home since September 2020 and only the fourth time Celtic have scored 5 goals away from home since the invincible season of 2016/2017. In the invincible season Celtic had four games away from home scoring 5 but I have a feeling Celtic could exceed that this year.
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