Celtic came from behind on Saturday to register their 14th win in 15 Scottish Premiership games this season.
The Hoops secured a vital 2-1 victory over Ross County at Parkhead, which opened up a nine-point lead at the top of the table before the World Cup break, thanks to second-half strikes from David Turnbull and Sead Haksabanovic.
David Cancola had given the visitors a shock lead from the penalty spot early in the second period but Turnbull levelled before Haksabanovic curled in a terrific strike to secure maximum points.
The match-winning goal from the Montenegro international caps off an impressive first few months in a Celtic jersey.
A late summer signing from Rubin Kazan, the attacker’s influence has slowly grown over the course of the first period of the season which has seen him contribute three goals and one assist.
Making his debut in the 4-1 League Cup over Ross County in Dingwall on August 31, Haksabanovic’s first start came in the 1-1 draw against Shakhtar Donetsk in Celtic’s second Champions League group stage game the following month.
There were further encouraging cameos in September before he made his first league start in the 2-1 win at St Johnstone in early October.
Starting in central midfield that day, Haksabanovic impressed in the narrow win at McDiarmid Park with his drilled cross in the first half forcing Andy Considine to turn the ball into his own net for the opener.
Since then, he has made four league starts, mostly on the wing, including at the weekend where again he made a crucial contribution to make it nine consecutive domestic wins since the most recent international break for Ange Postecoglou’s side.
Haksabanovic’s impact is highlighted in his impressive early-season domestic data.
Although he started the victory at McDiarmid Park in October in midfield, almost all of the Montenegrin’s minutes since then have come out wide (247 minutes at left wing and 133 minutes at right wing).
This first chart uses Wyscout per-90-minute data converted into percentile ranks to compare him with other attacking midfielders/wingers (minimum 400 minutes played) in the Scottish Premiership.
There are two caveats here that should be mentioned. The first is that this is still very much a small sample size, Haksabanovic has only clocked up a total of 463 league minutes so far this season.
Secondly, we would always expect Celtic players, given the nature of their dominance domestically, to score well across most of the metrics, particularly the volume attacking and possession ones.
That said, these initial numbers show some key areas where Haksabanovic has impressed in his early Celtic career.
He scores in the 90th percentile for both his goal contributions (0.77 per 90) as well his underlying expected goal contributions (0.63 per 90), a combination of expected goals (xG) and expected assists (xA).
His expected assists (0.45 per 90) is particularly impressive and underlines his substantial creative contribution to date with only Jota (0.48 per 90) registering more in this dataset.
As mentioned, we would expect to see his other volume attacking numbers rank high, given Celtic’s dominance in the league. However, his accuracy ranks stand out.
He has the third-highest crossing accuracy per cent in the dataset (46.15 per cent) and also comes joint second in terms of the highest shots on target per cent too, with 60 per cent of his shots on target. Only fellow Celt Liel Abada (66.67 per cent) boasts a more accurate rate in this sample.
Possession-wise, Haksabanovic scores well, as would be expected, with his 1.75 key passes per 90 and 1.17 through passes per 90 giving him a high rank for dangerous passes, a combination of both metrics.
His progressive passes, the highest in the dataset at 8.75 per 90, also highlight his offensive abilities in possession.
The data shows Haksabanovic contributing off the ball too – he has the second-highest possession-adjusted interceptions (6.18 per 90) here, only bettered by, unsurprisingly, Daizen Maeda (6.43 per 90).
StatsBomb’s data further highlights Haksabanovic’s domestic impact so far this season.
Again, with small sample size warnings, we can see the attacker stand out in similar key metrics to those on Wyscout, including open play xG assisted, successful box cross percentage and passing percentage.
StatsBomb’s On-ball Value (OBV) concept, a possession value model that objectively and quantitatively measures the value of each event on the pitch, is even more revealing when it comes to Haksabanovic’s impact in the league.
Of all players in the Scottish Premiership, who have played a minimum of 300 minutes, he comes out on top in the pass OBV metric (0.48), third for shot OBV (0.23) and joint-fifth – alongside Jota – in the dribble and carry OBV.
These individual OBV numbers contribute to Haksabanovic’s overall OBV of 0.91, the highest in the league, of all players who have played over 300 minutes.
A small sample of games admittedly. However, with the second-highest player score some way back, at 0.63 overall OBV, there is a very strong case to be made that he is currently the most valuable player on the ball in the Premiership.
Even if he does, in all likelihood, drop off a bit from that number over a more substantive period, he will still likely be among the highest in the league.
One final interesting area of Haksabanovic’s data this season from StatsBomb that should be noted is his shooting.
He has the lowest xG per shot (0.08) of the four Celtic wingers with over 300 minutes (Jota, Abada, and Maeda), which suggests he is taking shots on from low-quality areas and longer distances.
This is certainly what can be seen in his shot map above which maps all his shots in the Premiership so far. However, it does not tell the full story as he has a higher post-shot xG (0.38) than Jota (0.31) and Maeda (0.25). Abada has the highest at 0.79.
Post-shot xG is a model that builds on xG and considers what happens once the ball has left a player’s boot, the angle of the shot about the goal, whether the effort was a header, whether there are defenders between the player and the goal etc.
If a player’s post-shot xG exceeds their xG, it usually suggests their shooting is better and more accurate than their shooting position would suggest.
This would certainly apply to Haksabanovic when it comes to his winner on Saturday, which was curled around a Ross County defender and precisely placed into the far corner – it had an initial xG of 0.08 but the post-shot xG was 0.39.
This is evidence of his excellent ball-striking ability but it also stands to reason that should he get himself in more high-quality shooting positions then his effectiveness in front of goal would increase further still.
A quality and versatile attacking option, Haksabanovic has added an extra dimension to Celtic’s front line.
As the data underlines, the technically-gifted Montenegrin has made a sizeable impact in the early months of his Celtic career.
Given his limited minutes, due to getting up to speed after joining late in the window, and Postecoglou’s rotation to deal with a hectic fixture schedule, there is no doubt plenty more to come from the former West Ham man in the second half of the season.
With a reported transfer fee of around £2m though, it is already safe to say he has been another fantastic piece of transfer business by the Celtic manager.
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