Reo Hatate’s starring role in Celtic’s win over Ross County before the break capped off an impressive opening part of the season for the Japanese midfielder.
Hatate, who brilliantly laid on two second-half goals, ensuring the Hoops picked up all three points to move nine clear of their nearest rivals at the summit of the Scottish Premiership, has been in sparkling form for Ange Postecoglou’s side so far this season.
Surprisingly omitted from Japan’s World Cup squad, Hatate did not let that personal blow affect him and made key contributions in those last games before the break, including the important home victory against County.
Alongside Matt O’Riley, who was chosen to fill Callum McGregor’s role at the base of the midfield following the captain's injury in September, Hatate took on extra responsibility in the first part of the season too.
As Postecoglou summed up himself in the aftermath of that Parkhead win over Ross County: “He and Matty have carried an enormous shift over this period. We lost Callum McGregor early on and he’s such an influential player and fantastic footballer, Callum. And he played every game. We had to fill that void somehow. It’s been Matt and Reo who have done that.”
Hatate’s early-season data highlights just how influential a performer he has been in green and white so far this season.
The above chart uses Wyscout per-90-minute data converted into percentile ranks to compare him with other central midfielders (minimum 400 minutes played) in the Scottish Premiership.
There are of course the usual caveats here that we would always expect Celtic players, given the nature of their domestic dominance, to score well across most of the metrics, particularly the attacking and possession ones. A minimum of 400 minutes played dataset is still a relatively small sample size too.
However, this initial chart highlights several areas where Hatate has made a big impact, and not just in an attacking sense but defensively too.
Hatate’s combined one goal (0.09 per 90) and three assists (0.28 per 90) in the league see him rank highly for goal contributions while his underlying output numbers, his expected goal contributions, are similarly high (0.18 xG per 90 and 0.16 xA per 90).
In the possession section, Hatate’s ability to progress the ball through carries - a combination of dribbles and progressive runs – is clear as he scores in the 90th percentile. He has averaged 2.96 dribbles per 90 and 0.92 per 90 progressive runs.
We would always expect Celtic midfielders to dominate the volume passing metrics too, and that is certainly the case with Hatate. He has attempted 53.09 general passes per 90, 8.14 progressive passes per 90 and 1.57 dangerous passes per 90 (a combination of key passes and through passes).
His pass completion percentage (80.31 per cent) is a little below average for a Scottish Premiership midfielder, but this is likely impacted by the volume of more progressive and dangerous passes that he attempts each game.
Hatate’s influence on the ball is further highlighted by two additional key passing metrics from Wyscout, which can be seen in the above table.
Comparing him to the same players in the percentile chart, the Japanese maestro is the Celtic midfielder with the highest second assists (0.18 per 90). This is the last action of a player from the goalscoring team before an assist by a team-mate.
He also has the highest third assists - the last action of a player from the goalscoring team before a second assist by a team-mate - of any midfielder in the dataset.
These numbers underline just how important Hatate has been in constructing moves that led to goalscoring opportunities for his team-mates.
Looking back at his percentile rank chart, Hatate’s contribution to the defensive side of the game shows through with impressive win percentages for both his defensive duels and aerial duels.
Although only involved in 3.51 per 90 – one of the lowest in the dataset – he has a 63.16 per cent win rate for defensive duels. For aerial duels, Hatate is involved in 2.4 per 90 and, despite his diminutive stature, boasts one of the highest win rate percentages (65.38 per cent).
Finally, on his defensive section, Hatate has also contributed a more than solid 6.85 possession-adjusted interceptions per 90.
StatsBomb data also shines a light on just how influential Hatate has been this season.
Comparing his numbers from last season shows several areas where he has taken his game to the next level too, particularly in possession.
Hatate’s passing percentage (the percentage of all passes that were completed) is up slightly from 78 per cent to 80 per cent while he has also produced more deep completions – passes and dribbles or carries into the opposition third – up to 7.30 per 90 from 5.97 per 90 last season.
His xG assisted, a metric similar to Wyscout’s xA which calculates the expected goal value of the assisted shot, has also increased from 0.15 per 90 to 0.21 per 90. His number of successful dribbles completed is up too, to 0.65 from 0.42.
Hatate’s pressing numbers are down somewhat, both in terms of volume attempted and regains, but this is consistent with Celtic’s overall pressing numbers being down slightly on last year.
The Hoops have averaged 95.40 pressures per 90 in the league compared to 116.50 per 90 last season while regains are down from 24.13 per 90 last season to 20.47 per 90 this season.
The most telling metric of all is another possession one though, xGBuildup, which is a model that attributes the xG value of the final shot to all players involved in the entire possession.
While another StatsBomb metric, xGChain, attributes this value to all players involved in the entire possession, xGBuildup removes xG and xG assisted and instead focuses on just the possession work before the end of the chain.
Not only is Hatate up significantly on last season here, from 0.79 to 1.42, but he also tops this metric for the whole league (minimum 600 minutes played). Liel Abada has the second-highest (1.31) and Mortiz Jenz the third-highest (1.18) xG buildup value of all Scottish Premiership players.
This league-leading xGBuildup is also consistent with the high numbers from Wyscout for second and third assists that were highlighted earlier, once again bringing into sharp focus just how much Hatate has made this Celtic team tick.
Despite Japan’s fantastic achievement of making the last 16 of the World Cup, beating group rivals Spain and Germany to do so, Hatate’s peripheral international role still seems baffling.
Not only has he been a standout performer in the league for Celtic so far this season, as highlighted here, but he was also one of the team's more impressive players in the Champions League with one piece of technical brilliance – against Real Madrid – catching the eye in particular.
Deserved international recognition may yet come down the line for Hatate but, for now, it is Celtic fans who will be getting excited at the prospect of seeing him play again when domestic football resumes.
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