It’s a venue where many Celtic defenders have crumbled in recent years, but it’s worth noting that Carl Starfelt absolutely bossed it at the Tony Macaroni Arena yesterday.
We know how much of a bogey ground it’s been for us in the sense that we hadn’t won there in our 5 meetings since their 2017/18 promotion. However, it’s been a massively demoralising venue for our centre-backs in particular throughout that period.
Christopher Jullien was left rattled there after a 2-0 loss back in 2019 in which Lyndon Dykes gave him a torrid time. Even now, Chris has still struggled to overcome the notion that he isn’t comfortable dealing with powerful centre-forwards.
Let’s also not forget that Kris Ajer, Shane Duffy, and Nir Bitton all also made individual errors in a 2-2 draw there last season. And even in our most recent trip before yesterday, Stephen Welsh was at fault for a dreadful mistake that allowed Livi to take the 3 points. It’s been an absolutely haunting venue for our defenders in recent years.
So it looked primed for the highly-criticised Starfelt to turn up and have his own afternoon of hell on Livi’s plastic pitch. A centre-back who, despite being part of the best defence in Scotland, has even been criticised in 2022 despite his fantastic turnaround in performance levels [Football Scotland].
Well, the truth is, he more than turned up in West Lothian yesterday. Up against the physically imposing Joel Nouble, Starfelt didn’t give him a sniff in a fantastic aerial display.
Carl Starfelt bosses it at Livingston in a dominant Celtic performance
According to stat experts Fotmob, Starfelt won as many as 5 of his 6 aerial battles. That’s an area of our game we’ve been lacking in badly when up against Livingston in the past.
But the same goes for a lack of successful recoveries in recent meetings there too. When Livi have gotten joy against Celtic, they’ve tended to punish us. Starfelt made sure they barely tested Hart with a fantastic 5 recovery challenges. He also managed 4 clearances and 2 headed clearances.
We’re not pretending that Livi didn’t have their moments. They managed to score from a long throw-in whilst Cameron Carter-Vickers made some errors that could’ve led to goals from Ayo Obileye.
But not one of those errors came from the efficient Starfelt. Even when it came to the area of his game criticised more than anything – his passing – the Swedish international still thrived. Indeed, an 89.4% pass completion rate having made 94 passes in total shows just how tidy he was on the ball. Not bad considering the surface.
His display hasn’t been given enough credit given the performances of several others. It feels as though Starfelt is only highlighted if he makes some sort of blunder. The good displays don’t get the credit they deserve, and the truth is he was the best defender on the pitch against Livi.
Massive credit to him. No doubt Ange Postecoglou will be giving him his due praise after such a powerful outing at a ground that’s cursed many of our centre-backs.
In other news, Peter Grant left blown away by Ange’s “big change” that’s really kicking Celtic on
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