Miguel Chaiwa has been ranked as one of the hardest-working young midfielders in Europe by the CIES Football observatory.
Celtic’s interest in Chaiwa is now well-documented, with the Zambia international impressing since moving to Edinburgh last summer.
Initially being taken in and out of the Hibees team by David Gray, he is now enjoying a positive run of form, and the report says exactly why.
The International Centre for Sports Studies (French: Centre International d’Étude du Sport, hence CIES) is widely cited for its statistical analysis.
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Celtic-linked Miguel Chaiwa is the 10th hardest-working young midfielder in Europe
The data ranks the midfielders with the ten most sprints per 30 minutes in Europe’s top 40 divisions, among midfielders aged 23 and younger.
It excludes players who have only played a small number of minutes to prevent anomalies.
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Also ranking high are Lewis Miley of Newcastle, Yegor Yarmolyuk of Brentford and £100m-rated Brighton midfielder Carlos Baleba.
David Moses of Slavia Prague ranks as the hardest working, whilst Pedro Bravo’s name also appears; the Colombian impressed for Midtjylland against Celtic earlier this season.
Celtic’s midfield has been frequently criticised this season, with fans calling for more graft and physical presence in the side.
Chaiwa isn’t a giant, but the numbers clearly show his physical capacity which could inject some much-needed energy into the Hoops’ engine room.
Hibs paid a fee of £600,000 to bring him to Scotland from Switzerland last year. He faced Celtic in the Champions League’s League Phase last season.
Aged 22, he has 16 caps for the Zambian national team and featured for them at this season’s Africa Cup of Nations.
He was particularly impressive in the Hibees’ win at Celtic Park earlier this year, playing a one-two with Felix Passlack in the build-up to the winning goal.
Just? Maswanhise? Mulligan? Someone else?
Other Scottish Premiership players linked with Celtic
There is an unusually high number of players in the Scottish Premiership being linked with the Hoops at the minute, with Chaiwa among them.
Elijah Just of Motherwell continues to be intensely linked; there looks set to be a race for him in the summer.
Just’s teammate, Tawanda Maswanhise, also continues to be linked after a stellar season, reportedly being subject to a scouting visit from O’Neill in January.
Luke Graham, David Watson and Josh Mulligan are three more recent examples.
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