Why Celtic will 'comfortably' win the league this season

Then, there have been dedicated League Cup weekends and the introduction of the new and expanded Champions League. Plenty of football, 16 matches including pre-season, but only seven in the bread-and-butter basket of the league.

Seven wins out of seven with only one goal conceded is near perfect from an outcome perspective, but you know I look at performances first and results second. A rival has matched that record in rejuvenated Aberdeen under Jimmy Thelin. The city rivals are tucked in solid third and will undoubtedly be capable of going on an unbeaten run.

Let’s take a temperature check, and where possible, project ahead.

Expected points

A couple of sources for projection of expected points.

These tables are generated based on models that take key underlying metrics, expected goals for and against being primary, and model out the rest of the season given the fixtures and opposition quality. That generates a projection for the expected points each team will achieve given current performances.

It’s a bit of fun, but the first offering from the excellent @TheGersReport account on X has a long history of being prescient.

This has Celtic prevailing by season's end to the tune of over 20 points. Aberdeen falls away to third but not without a battle. Interesting, by far the two ‘worst’ expected clubs in Ross County and St Johnstone made life sticky for the Glasgow teams in the weekend just gone. One or two unexpected performances can change the projections dramatically at this early stage.

Secondly, the site Footbalxg provides predicted outcomes based on expected goals for many leagues – have a play, it’s fun.

They have Celtic estimated to be 16 points clear by the time the teams complete the scheduled 33-match cycle. They do not know the post-split fixtures, so the projections work on a ‘known knowns’ basis.

Given that projected lead after 33 games, it would not be a stretch to estimate a nearly 20-point advantage to the champions after the full 38-match schedule. At that rate of points, Celtic would be expected to reach 100 by season’s end. So, even at this stage, the different models are close and highly optimistic for Celtic supporters.

Underlying Performances

What might be driving this? Simple xG is as good a place to start as any.

Statsbomb has Celtic generating 1.66 xG more than the opposition each game. That is over the sweet spot of 1.5 xG whereby historical data shows that it is difficult for normal football variance (luck to you and me) such as bad finishing, good finishing, goalkeeper ups and downs, refereeing calls, bad bounces and so forth, to be such that this gap can consistently be closed on a game-by-game basis. You are overwhelming the opposition.

Nearest challengers Rangers’ xG differential of 0.74, being less than 1 xG, is well within the bounds of such variances cancelling out any performance advantage on occasion. We’ve seen this in their two most recent matches. Hibernian missed a penalty to peg back the Ibrox club. Whilst St Johnstone missed a great chance, had a goal disallowed and could not take advantage of 10-man Rangers at the weekend.

Some weeks such scenarios will fall differently as regards outcomes. It is only in xG generated from set pieces that Celtic’s attack is not 99th or 100th percentile. Celtic tends to prioritise possession retention over direct set-piece chance creation, believing they can break teams down in open play. So hardly surprising.

Celtic’s average xG against is 0.07. The highest in the league is 0.11 so there are small incremental differences. But remember, that is an average PER SHOT. Extrapolate that over a whole season, and Celtic concede fewer shots than anyone else, and it starts to make a material difference. Overall, Celtic concede 4.57 shots per game – the next lowest is 7.00 and the highest is 10.43 so they are an outlier.

Defensively there isn’t a major indicator where Celtic are not dominant in the league including allowing only 0.43 shots on the counterattack and 0.09 xG per game from set pieces.

Reasons for alarm?

This is a season where some of the recent challengers especially Heart of Midlothian and Kilmarnock, have - through poor management and being unable to compete in Europe and domestically simultaneously - made poor starts. That is not to say that they will not improve, I am sure they will, but their priorities are to get away from the relegation zone rather than battle for European places. Also, St Mirren under Stephen Robinson was one of the first teams to give Celtic problems in the way he set up his teams. They have also struggled with the demands of a rare European adventure.

Cash-strapped Rangers have troubles in the boardroom, the stadium and on the balance sheet hence a period of austerity has been imposed given they ran up the largest player wage bill in Scotland. And as we all know, there is a direct correlation between money spent on footballers and results. Aberdeen is a new threat with a remarkable 13-match unbeaten run in all competitions and no European distractions. I hate to be 'that guy' but the underlying performance metrics suggest, how can I put this delicately, a period of downward adjustment is likely.

So, not the best season for competition at the top of the league, but Celtic cannot take anything for granted. The weekend match at Ross County saw Don Cowie deploy a back five with a narrow diamond midfield four in front. County has the lowest xG against from counterattacking in the league. They then had a goal threat in Ronan Hale. That template, if repeated by other clubs, can discomfort Celtic as we saw in Dingwall.

Of course, County ran out of energy (18 per cent possession plus 184 pressures will do that) and because of the five-substitute rule, Celtic was able to energise the key attacking areas. Celtic’s biggest danger may be to themselves if Brendan Rodgers has another brain freeze as we saw in Dortmund and sets the team up in wholly illogical ways given the strength of the opposition. But Europe is a whole other conversation.

For now, Celtic has made an excellent start to the league campaign and all the underlying metrics point to a comfortable title win.

I am sure this will be bookmarked when it falls flat – if so, then fair enough!