Celtic have carried out an in-house study into the defending of set-pieces, and have yielded some pretty unsurprising results.
Too often this season, the Hoops have been undone by a corner or free-kick into our penalty area. Lewis Ferguson’s goal for Aberdeen 11 days ago in our last fixture was the 19th we’ve conceded from set-pieces this term alone [The Scotsman]. That’s not even including the cross-balls in general play that we’ve conceded from either.
Rangers, today’s opponents at Ibrox no less, have profited more than most from this sheer defensive incompetence. They’ve scored six goals against us this season. Three have come from set pieces whilst two have come from direct crosses from the right side.
Kennedy has promised that we’ll see the side set up differently when defending them this afternoon. And he claims this has been the result of a study the club has carried out to try and finally put an end to our defensive woes.
“We’ve not been good enough”
As quoted by the Scotsman, Kennedy said: “We’ve changed the dynamic of how we set up [at set-pieces] and weren’t happy with the goal at Aberdeen. It’s been something we have been trying to address because we’ve conceded too many in those moments.
“We have to keep working at that and doing the best we can. We have looked at things across the board in a study in-house and teams who deal with set play situations often have a lot of physicality and good height in the team, a lot of players who are able to handle the aerial side of it. We’re not a big side, and it’s certainly something going forward in the profile of the squad that you have to have an element of physicality because set plays are an important part of the game.
“We’ve not been good enough this season and the challenge we have in the squad is we aren’t the biggest, most physical team and the answer to that is to do our jobs better and what we have tried to do is control games more and give less set plays away, which puts us under that threat.”
Celtic study results on major achilles heel = we need taller players
It all feels a bit underwhelming. To suggest that we’ve done some sort of extensive research only for the main point to be that we need bigger players? Hm.
I’m sure it’s not the only conclusion Celtic have come to. Hopefully, we’ll see the result of this study in action today and pick out what we’re trying to do differently when defending these set-pieces.
It’s no denying that we’ve lacked a bit of height in the team this season. But it’s not as if conceding from corners and free-kicks has been a recent thing. It’s been happening all season with towering monsters such as Kris Ajer, Chris Jullien, and Shane Duffy in the side. We’ve had plenty of height across the backline this year.
Height isn’t our only problem
There are plenty of teams around the world who manage to defend set-pieces a lot more efficiently than us and with a smaller squad. Man City are hardly full of 7ft powerhouses for example.
Look at the set-piece goals we’ve lost against Rangers for example. For Connor Goldson’s first goal at centre-back, he was supposed to have been marked by Ajer. Callum McGregor, meanwhile, headed into his own net at Ibrox. Then you have Alfredo Morelos’ goal at Celtic Park – again Ajer allowed Rangers to win the first header before Jonjoe Kenny allowed Morelos to run off him to score.
All of these were preventable and not simply down to a lack of aerial prowess in the side. Yes, signing some more physical players in the summer would be ideal. But let’s not pretend that’s where all of our issues lie. With a bit of luck, Kennedy can come up with something to stop the bleeding from set-pieces today. Goodness knows we could use the boost.
In other news, Callum McGregor’s future has been addressed by John Kennedy.
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