Celtic’s Attacking Options Are Less Than They Were, But Still Look Strong For Tomorrow.

When you look at the Celtic side of last season and then the one we’re watching just now, it’s obvious that we’re not as powerful in the key area of the pitch where the games are won. Our attacking options are less than they were.

There is no Jota. There is no Abada. We score less goals than we did last season. These are the facts. They are undisputed.

We are on 85 goals right now. It’s impressive … except …

Except last season we finished with 114; we’re obviously not going to get near that. It’s the equivalent of losing a goal a game. Think about how significant that is when your team has drawn six games. That’s a title winning margin right there.

Defensively, we actually seem more robust, not that you’d know that reading the press. We’ve conceded only 27 goals thus far; it would take three proper bad performances for us to lose the 34 now that we lost in the last campaign.

The reason this league isn’t out of sight yet is clear; the tip of the spear isn’t as sharp as it’s been the last couple of years.

Still, 85 goals in the 35 games can’t be simply dismissed. It’s still an average of 2.4 goals every match, which is pretty decent.

The spear still works. It still kills most of what it pierces. That’s why we’re on 84 points, with another 90 plus campaign in our sights. It’s why a win tomorrow virtually sews this title up. This team is still a goal-scoring machine.

Yet the epic weirdness of this season can be found in the stats; our top scorer in the league is Matt O’Riley with 14 goals. Kyogo is a goal behind him on 13. You have to go all the way down to seven to find our next highest, and believe it or not that’s Adam Idah.

You know who else is on seven? David Turnbull. Behind them, on six, is Luis Palma.

Here’s why I’m encouraged; in the last ten league games, we’ve scored three times or more in seven of them. In one of those games we scored seven goals, the one against Dundee at home. The exceptions were the 1-1 draw at home to Kilmarnock, the two-nil Tynecastle John Beaton Day of Shame and the recent 2-1 win against Dundee away.

This means that over the last ten matches we’re outperforming our season average for goals scored; when Rodgers says that this, the business end of the season, is where Celtic comes to life, that’s borne out in those numbers.

And when did we kick on in this fashion? Well the ten game run starts with that 1-1 draw against Killie at Celtic Park, but it started cooking against Motherwell away the following week, the game which Keith Jackson recently described as a “bin fire”, like the complete idiot that he is. Every Celtic fan sensed that something big had happened that afternoon, especially when Adam Idah popped up with his two goals.

In the ten games prior to the last ten we’d scored three or more goals three times, not seven, and that is the run which coincides with our general collapse and the loss of our seven-point advantage; it takes in the loss at Kilmarnock, the home defeat against Hearts and the 1-1 draw with Aberdeen. Had we been able to score three goals in any of those games we’d have flipped this whole script and this league title would be almost over the line right now.

Do we need to score three tomorrow to win?

We scored three at Ibrox and only got a draw, but I would suggest that in the much more Celtic-friendly environment of Parkhead that we are well capable of putting three past them, and if we do that then the game, and the league, are finished. Score one early, and you could really see their heads go down, and then I think in spite of our lack of goals as compared to last season we can inflict real damage.

And if we get a couple in the opening stages, losing by three might be considered, by them, to be a relatively good day’s work, in light of the alternatives.