GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - OCTOBER 05: Celtic's Daizen Maeda celebrates as he scores to win the match 3-2 during a William Hill Premiership match between Celtic and Motherwell at Celtic Park, on October 05, 2025, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Williamson/SNS Group via Getty Images)
One of the Celtic sites last night, I think it was 67 Hail Hail, and I think it was my good friend Paddy Sinat, did a very good analysis of Daizen Maeda and why his numbers this year are so worrying.
According to that analysis, he has been presented with broadly the same number of chances as he got last season. He is just not scoring them. I was genuinely surprised by that, because I have been arguing for a while that we have a system problem as much as a player problem.
I stand by that. We do have a system problem, and I am going to explore that in more detail later in another piece. But we also have a player problem. There is no question about that. When you look at the statistics, it is clear that Maeda has regressed.
It is clear that he is not putting the ball in the net as often as he did last season. Something is off with him at the moment.
You do not become a bad player overnight. Whatever is going on with him, whether it is emotional, mental or simply a crisis of confidence, he should be doing much better than this.
That is bad for Celtic. It is also bad for Maeda himself.
Yes, he is going to the World Cup. But no top side is going to sign him on the basis of what he is doing in the Celtic first-team squad right now. He is one of a number of players who needs a jolt to get him back to doing what he was doing before.
The more I watch this team, the clearer it becomes that even in a season where he has not been at his best, he is still the best striker at the club.
I do not even think he is a penalty-box striker in the strictest sense. O’Neill is not playing him as an inside forward, and that takes away a lot of his natural talent. But I cannot bear watching our current strike force flounder and flop its way through games either.
So we need to make a decision.
Either Daizen gets picked as a central striker, and we leave him there to lead the line, or we leave him out on the left and accept the irrelevance that comes with that role under this system.
We do have players who can play on the left-hand side. I cannot understand why Tonekti is not playing at the moment. Even if he only shows it in flashes, he is a goal scorer and he should be starting every game on the left. Maeda should be playing through the middle.
If the manager is not going to trust Iheanacho as our central striker, then it has to be Maeda. Cvancara is not working. We cannot sit around waiting for him to find his confidence. We are in a critical place right now, and that is not a luxury we have.
There was one piece of good news in those numbers from that article.
If Maeda is still getting the number of chances he got last season, then we are doing more right than I thought. We are getting the ball to him in places where he can hurt teams. Even if he is not finishing regularly, we at least know that he, out of all our front men, is capable of doing it. We know he has that ability. If we need goals in this team, he is the most likely player to produce them.
We know what Maeda’s skill set is. The question now is whether we want to shape the system to suit the best attacking player we have.
Because if we give this guy enough chances, he is going to take some of them. That is still a far better situation than the one we are in right now, where we have strikers who look bereft of confidence and cannot put the ball in the net.
If Daizen really does want to leave, then he is also playing for his move. That should be motivation enough.
Right now, he is ineffective on the left because he is not playing the same role he played under Rodgers last season. We cannot afford ineffectiveness on the left when our options through the middle are so poor.
I have been saying for months that I thought both Maeda and Reo Hatate would still have a big role to play in this title race. Quite possibly, they will have a decisive role to play.
It is high time they got that chance.
If this is the last we are going to see of those two players, send them out on a high. They should have the chance to drive us to a title and sign off as heroes. They are still two of the strongest cards we have, and we are not using them properly.
Even if they have not hit the heights we expected this season, it is how you finish, not how you start, that matters most.
Those two still have a major role to play before the end.
Maeda, in particular, matters here because we all know what he can do.
He just has not been doing it.
It is time to take the shackles off these players and let them loose.
What shackles? No one has been holding players back from doing what they can do and what they have done previously, it is all self- imposed, the players are solely to blame for their own bad form, for their own lack of motivation and their own selfish attitude. Martin can only get so much out of them, and he has done that, but they are all guilty of lethargy and to a certain extent laziness. When Chris Sutton criticised them after their latest efforts, Chris was right, and I think most of us feel the same way.
Right now I am totally conflicted, for I can see us winning the last 5 League games and lifting the League title, yahoo, but at the same time I can also see us just as easily losing all of them, or drawing all of them, for it is hard to know what Celtic team is going to turn upon any given day. It really is in the lap of the Gods from now on in, and it is fully dependent on the players approach and commitment for each game.
We can only live in Hope, for the Faith we are famous for has been just about shattered.
I have to agree with Johnny on this one.
However I do think that the club missed the chance to let Maeda move on at the right time based on their player trading model. That decision hit him and his family badly emotionally as well as in his career development. The promises made to him were broken, and in his culture that’s a difficult blow to overcome, no matter how hard he tries.
He’s basically been betrayed by the club and can’t get his head or heart to accept it, no matter how hard he runs or attempts to convert chances.
Aye Danny, Maeda is definitely disillusioned and he will never get his mojo back at Celtic Park, he doesn’t seem interested. I’m sure he is still capable of rising to the odd occasion….. I think, but is he going to have an epiphany and hit the heights on 5 odd occasions? Having said that, I would still rather have him up centre front than the alternatives.
For me MON has to find a way to play Nygren in his natural no. 10 position and select a 3 man midfield without him in it. He has to overrule SM’s tippy tappy philosophy and play the formation that best suits the players at his disposal.
DannyGal agree with you on Nygren, some way has to be found to play Nygren as an 8 or 10 with 3 recognised midfielders, even if we have to sacrifice one of our wingers. 4-3-3 with a misfiring striker, and 2 wingers who hardly get a look in for long periods in games when we’re not controlling the M/F, is just not cutting it.
Passing has to be crisper and into space behind the defence, especially when Maeda or Yang are playing , both those players are more comfortable running on to a ball, rather than getting it to feet. Tounekti is different, he likes it to feet.
Surely MON and Maloney know that continually playing with this system at the moment, isn’t cutting it.
While I appreciate all that MON has done since his arrival here, there’s no doubt that something has gone wrong at Celtic. Irrespective of the situation regarding Maeda, we need to know why the players have suddenly appeared to down tools and started playing so badly. It’s possible that the Nancy experience sapped their confidence, but that’s no excuse for the dreadful way we have been playing, we’re talking about professional football players here, there’s absolutely no reason for us to be so bad. But I would also like to know why we aren’t playing Tounekti, Bernard and Sarrachi? Is there something MON isn’t telling us? We are already missing Jota, CCV, Alistair Johnson and Callum Osmand, so I think that MON should tell us why he isn’t playing those mentioned. This is a very tight title race so we should be utilising every player possible to help us out in our quest to win.
One of the biggest mysteries this season is the drop off in form of Paulo Bernardo, I really thought he was going to be a very influential player this season. I know he hasn’t had a look in under 3 different managers this season, but I’ve got to say when he has been seen, he looks a shadow of the player he promised to be in the previous couple of seasons.
He is another player who hasn’t reached his full potential at Celtic Park, I would bet that if he moves on he’ll be a top player for some club in the future.
There’s something far wrong in player development at Lennoxtown, even under BR this was happening.
Except for the disgraceful lack of signings for the striker role, our pool of players should have been enough to win this League. What hasn’t helped is the managerial musical chairs and complete mismanagement by this Board in the people they hired in key areas of the club.
If we are depending on Maeda to improve we really are in trouble, I have never seen a top flight player struggle with his first touch and control as much as this guy. From the moment he was clean through against Kairat Almaty and blew it, he has had a mare, should be dropped completely, not tried again as striker, we did that already and he was awful
I agree, Maeda should be dropped. He is a great presser and works hard.
Unfortunately he is a dud as far as playing football.
For me Maeda has to be played through the middle but the ball has to be played in the areas he is most likely to get it. Play forward has to be much quicker especially out to the wide men to enable them to at least take on the defender rather than be forced to play it backwards. Our strikers whom ever they are must be bored stiff watching McGregor, Scales, Ralston continually look to play it backwards.How many times during the 90 mins. do we see our keeper get more touches than the opposition keeper, it has to stop. Sevco 1-3 game the first half should have been done and dusted we made and missed so many chances but at least the chances were there, not so now with the style of play.McGregor kills any foward movement so to Scales, it has to change or we will watch most games from behind the couch.
Any word of Osmand being available cos we need fuckin something – ANYTHING !
If you look at the players Mon is picking they all have one thing in common. They are willing to chase the ball down and defend when they don’t have the ball. They may not be the most skilled in the squad but the manager trusts them to graft for the team. Tounetki is OK going forward but is an empty jersey without the ball and at the business end of the season I this dog fight we can’t afford any passengers. Again why Maeda is one of the first on the team sheet. It’s not pretty but is getting us the points….so far.
As far as Tounetki goes, he is one of the few things I associate with that terrible performance and result at Tannadice a few weeks ago.
He came on as a substitute, dragged his leg a few times and did absolutely nothing for us. You could see he had run out of ideas and threw in the towel.
I thought that is not a Celtic player.
In either quality,ideas or drive especially in such a crucial game.
The problem at Celtic is everything, it needs rubbed oot & rote back in. New players, new manager, new coaches & most of all a new board. All we need is for dd to grow a pair do what is needed then take a step back & let the professionals do there jobs. Only problem is he wont do that.
“According to that analysis, he has been presented with broadly the same number of chances as he got last season. He is just not scoring them. I was genuinely surprised by that…”
James – why were you surprised by that? Maeda’s stats throughout his entire career show he is not a natural goalscorer (he averages less than 1 goal every three games). In his first three seasons with us he scored 29goals IN TOTAL. Last season he scored 33goals – last season was the outlier NOT this season (albeit this season he has been very very poor).
He had a 1v1 in the dying mins in the Cup-final and flunked it and a 1v1 in each in the two legs vs Almaty and flunked them both. Sliding doors moments – a treble and ECL qualification went up in smoke – I’m not blaming him for those losses btw (as the whole team were rank rotten in all three games and Brendan’s tactics and refusal to change formation, style and point of attack are all at fault) but let’s be honest who thinks if Kyogo had still been with us he wouldn’t have buried all three? Kyogo was a natural goalscorer – Maeda’s effort and commitment can never, and will never, be questioned and when he goes and wherever he goes he should go with the entire Celtic Family’s best wishes and sincere thanks for all he’s done for us – unarguably one of our best signings in the last ten years – but he never has been and never will be a reliable natural goalscorer.
Having said that, I do agree with your analysis regarding team shape/style and where he best fits – currently he’s our best option to start in the middle and either be replaced by Iheanacho after 60-65mins IF we’re winning or stay on and partner Iheancho when he comes on if we’re drawing/losing at that stage.