Arne Engels: How good has he really been for Celtic this season?

On our podcast last night, we discussed the critics of Adam Idah, and I’ve come to the conclusion that changing minds on him is essentially going to be impossible. I don’t know what the big lad has to do to win people over; I suspect nothing will ever be enough. He could score every week and some folk still wouldn’t be satisfied.

We also spoke a little bit about Austin Trusty.

He might be the most disappointing of all the summer signings, because he’s the one of the big buys who has yet to properly establish himself in the team. He’s been in and out. I personally think he’s got something, but he certainly hasn’t proved it yet. He has a big summer ahead of him.

There are elements of his game he has to work on. A proper pre-season with the rest of the team might work wonders. Or we might have a decision to make.

Most people think we need at least one more centre back in the window regardless, and that a couple of those currently on the books need to be punted. At least we at Celtic don’t kid ourselves about the complexities of that job.

It’s not easy getting unwanted players off the books. To hear some talk, you’d think that kind of rebuild was the simplest thing in the world.

The third of the big-money summer signings was Arne Engels, and he’s the player we talked about least. We’ve all gone over how he’s the youngest player in the first team squad (he ought to have walked away with the Young Player of the Year award, but with the narrative around him there was no chance of that), but what few have tried to do is analyse exactly what he does in the team.

Arne has 84% pass accuracy. That doesn’t put him anywhere near the top players in the league, but this was his first campaign. He has, however, the fourth-highest number of what are known as “key passes” in the whole league. What does that mean, exactly? A “key pass” is one that leads to someone taking a shot at goal. That’s a very interesting indicator of what a player is doing.

This is a young guy still adjusting to the pace of the Scottish game and to the movements of his team-mates around him. That’s why the passing accuracy isn’t as high as it is for the more experienced players; they’ve adapted to the speed and patterns of play. He’s still getting there.

But he will. He’s getting up to speed. And I think by this time next season, we’ll realise we’re watching a player of the highest quality, a player of genuine style. You can see it in little glimpses. It’s there. It’s obvious.

Additionally, a lot of people have completely miscalculated what it is the player actually does in the team. Engels plays in a strange position for Celtic.

He’s doing a very unusual job. He is not our attacking fulcrum — that’s Hatate. He’s not our defensive midfielder — that’s McGregor. And key passes aren’t even the proper metric to explain what he does.

If you look at passing stats, you’ll find something unusual — the players in the Celtic team who have the most passes in a game are actually the defenders. That’s because of the way we play football. They make more passes than anyone else in the side. That’s why certain players you might not think are great defenders are chosen ahead of better defenders — because we play a build-from-the-back style.

Our defenders have to be able to pass the ball well.

We know McGregor’s job is to hold the midfield and protect the defence. We know that Rio’s job is to sit behind the attackers and help facilitate attacking moves. But in between the two of them is Engels. His job is essentially to knit together the defence and the attack.

He doesn’t make too many key passes because that’s not his role. He doesn’t rack up assists either, because his position is to sit between the goal scorers and the midfield anchor. In short, he does a lot of spade work that goes largely unnoticed in the midfield. His job is to start attacking moves, not to be there at the end of them.

That’s what leads a lot of people, who only look at metrics like key passes, assists and goals, to conclude that he’s not really having an impact on games.

His passing stats overall do need to improve — that’s a fact.

An 84% completion rate is decent, but I think a guy in his role should be hitting the 90s. Still, there’s a lot to take into consideration here. This is his first year in this league, and the pace is very different to what he’s used to. Space is tighter. He’s under more pressure. And he’s carrying the weight of that enormous price tag, which no player should have to bear, since they’re not the ones who pay it.

There are players on the pitch whose value always goes unrecognised because of where they play and what their job actually is.

Earlier in the season, when Kyogo was getting criticised for not scoring enough, some people pointed out that his presence on the pitch — the way he moves defenders around, the way he has to be marked, his tendency to drop deep or go wide — was creating space for our wide players, who were scoring regularly. That went unnoticed because Kyogo’s primary job, allegedly, was to score goals.

But that wasn’t the only thing he was doing in his position. And I would argue that those of us who praised Adam Idah’s performance at the weekend did so because of a lot of the things he did off the ball — the way he pulled defenders out of position, the way he harried and hassled even when he wasn’t in possession.

This is what I mean when I say there are players whose contributions go completely unnoticed. If you’re not scoring goals, creating them, or stopping them at the other end, it’s easy for people to overlook your impact on the team and wonder what it is that you actually do.

There are plenty of extenuating circumstances for Arne and his performances so far — but those performances haven’t actually been bad.

He’s settling in very nicely. The fact that he’s fourth in the league for key passes — even though that’s not technically his job — points to a player who, once he’s fully up to speed, will be of the very highest quality. Yes, that 84% pass completion needs to improve. That’s a given. But I think all the signs are positive.