Jota gels with Celtic midfield to down Ferencvaros - tactical and data match report

The hosts controlled proceedings for the majority of the 90 minutes and should have added to their two-goal lead before the end of the game.

Kyogo Furuhashi's glorious first touch allowed him to take Jota's raking pass in his stride before nonchalantly stroking the ball into the net, before David Turnbull, of sorts, sealed the win after doing his best to keep the deficit at one.

Not a single aspect of the game was dominated by Ferencvaros

Goals

A two-goal cushion is the least Celtic deserved from this game.

The pattern of xG until the first goal was relatively similar, with one decent chance being passed up by Ferencvaros early in the game while Celtic's cumulative amount grew incrementally until the hour mark when Kyogo struck - a chance StatsBomb says he'd be expected to bury nearly four times out of five. He still made it look incredibly easy, mind you.

Goal number two is slightly more complicated.

When Jota squared the ball for Turnbull, who was nine yards from goal and quite frankly had the ball on a silver platter, he was expected to get stuck in. Instead, he incredibly fluffed his lines and passed up the chance, one which StatsBomb has as an xG of 0.68.

The ball hit Turnbull's standing foot and as such, the chance didn't end there. What ensued is marked on StatsBomb as a 0.01 expected goal as the Celt and Balint Vecsei slid in towards goal (goalkeeper Denes Dibusz was already on his backside, you see) and the ball ricocheted into the net. UEFA ultimately deemed it an own goal but Celtic, despite the low xG on the attempt, had their second.

Shots

Shot attempts are the sort of stat that can help tell the story of a game.

Celtic took aim 10 more times than Ferencvaros (18-10) and hit the target six more times (8-2). As explained in the colour chart below, Celtic passed up two opportunities created by through balls, firstly when Turnbull slid his left-footed shot wide before Jota's radar told him the near-post was half-a-yard to the right.

In summary, Celtic not adding to their tally later in the game wasn't due to the good work of the Ferencvaros keeper, but rather Celtic's failure to hit the target.

However, Dibusz did prevent Celtic from scoring their second before they eventually did, when he saved Callum McGregor's penalty. StatsBomb rates penalties as 0.76 on the xG scale, meaning without that chance Celtic's cumulative xG for the 90 minutes would have been 2.64.

Joe Hart was only exerted on a couple of occasions, such as towards the end of the game when Carl Starfelt was pressured and his sliced clearance presented Myrto Uzuni with a potential opening.

The Celtic keeper ultimately clawed the ball away as the Albanian attempted to prod the ball home but that opportunity doesn't count as an xG because the winger didn't literally get a shot away. Aside from that, the two strikes Hart had to stop forged a combined xG of 0.07.

Pressing and defending

There's an interesting distinction on the flanks for Celtic, in terms of pressing. There's a similar pattern as against Leverkusen, where the most intense pressing comes in the wide areas but, oppositely, the most intense pressure was applied on the left flank, which paints a picture of the numbers which tell us Jota and Adam Montgomery both pressed considerably higher and more often than Liel Abada and Anthony Ralston.

Interestingly, the three players who applied pressure most often were Rogic, Turnbull and McGregor, which suggests they were happy to float from port to starboard to outnumber opposition players in possession. 

Giorgos Giakoumakis partook in this job responsibility as well when he was introduced and it was his pressing that led to the loose pass intercepted by Callum McGregor before Jota set up Turnbull for the second goal 'incident'.

Possession and passing

Tuesday represented a huge change from the passing information garnered during the Leverkusen game - this time Celtic's playmakers are dipped in blood-red rather than yellow or blue.

Starfelt to Cameron Carter-Vickers, and vice-versa, were still the most popular passing lanes with the three central midfielders the next on the list in terms of exchanging possession.

Thick lines illustrate the more popular channels, and the darker the colour is, the more constructive the passing was, which shows McGregor and Turnbull both linked up well with Jota. Celtic's threat certainly emanated from the left.

Abada did not enjoy the same generosity. Passes in his direction were more fruitless and scarce and he was the only player in the Celtic starting XI not to make a key pass during the game. His Portuguese pal on the left made four. Tom Rogic being positioned on Abada's side might explain why the hub of his network is burning so warmly.