Daizen Maeda, Celtic's pressing evolution and the Champions League question set to be posed

Much has been made of Daizen Maeda’s exploits in this regard. Stats about sprint speeds and kilometres covered were commonly regaled when he was just a rumoured signing, and certainly since the start of his eight-month tenure at Parkhead. 

Without question, Maeda’s efforts have been reflected in various counting statistics, as this defending and pressing-centric radar comparing him and Jota in league games indicates:

We can see that Maeda has defended and pressed at nearly double Jota’s rate when it has come to pressures and related regains, with smaller but still substantially higher rates across the board. With an exception.

Jota has been a bit more efficient in his defending, which is to say he’s won more of his tackles and defended against dribblers with higher efficiency.

The net impact of all of this is what Defensive Action On-Ball Value (OBV) is designed to try to measure:

It will probably not be a surprise that Jota’s attacking-centric OBV metrics have been far superior to Maeda’s, but he’s even matched him in Defensive Action OBV. This introduces another question, which is how has the team done relative to defending and pressing with Maeda versus without?

The first two lines of the table were separated into the period of last season from after the summer transfer window closing through December, and then from January through the present. I chose to exclude the games from July and August last season due to the large change in player composition and the distortive impact of the two huge drubbings of Dundee and St Mirren. 

The various metrics offer a window into how ‘Ange-ball’ has evolved, with the players arriving in January last season coinciding with a significant increase in pressing intensity.

Importantly, the higher intensity was also accompanied with higher efficiency, as reflected in the increase in Pressure Regain percentage and Counterpressure Regain percentage.

The average quality of chances from open play has increased - even as overall xG from open play has basically been the same - as has the amount of shots generated from the high press.

All other things being equal, the higher quality of chances should reduce game-to-game variance in results (i.e. ‘bad luck’).

However, how will this evolution in Celtic’s style of play translate when facing opponents of dramatically higher quality in the Champions League?

There is no StatsBomb data for the Europa Conference League games versus Bodo/Glimt but we can infer even from the eye tests of those games that Celtic’s pressing was not very successful.

As we look back towards the pre-Maeda games in last season’s Europa League group stage, here was how Celtic ranked of the 32 teams in various related metrics:

The table shows various metrics from Celtic’s opposition (designated with ‘-a’) as well as some of the pressing metrics covered already within the domestic league.

We can see that the Hoops struggled mightily with limiting chances by their opponents from all facets of open play. At the same time, their ability to create chances off of the high press was limited, despite their volume and relative efficiency of pressing having been around average for the 32 teams in the group stage.

Additionally, Celtic conceded by far the highest number of shots from opponents’ high press, with an average of six compared to the 31st ranked side at 4.5 shots. 

While it appears clear that the shift in playing style starting after the January transfer window has helped contribute to Celtic’s current unbeaten run in the league, there remains a concern that much of that has been due to the combination of Ange Postecoglou’s system/coaching with the large disparity in quality of players the Parkhead side enjoys domestically.

Pressing and counter-pressing effectively require coordination and the entirety of a team fulfilling their duties. Even if Maeda is an elite individual player relative to pressing, playing against a higher level of opposition will likely require his teammates do a better job of matching him to be truly effective.

This may be a tall order given the evidence from last season. Celtic do not appear to have made enough improvements in personnel to facilitate a material improvement in dealing with opponents’ high press. Maeda may need heroic efforts from his teammates to get more out of the Hoops’ high press; if that does not occur, Celtic could face a huge challenge to overcome the number of high-quality chances Champions League opponents can create against them.