Can Rodgers rediscover Celtic’s attacking X-factor?

Scottish Premiership: Motherwell vs. Celtic

Glasgow’s Celtic Park Date: Sunday, October 4th Kick-off: 5:00 BST

It’s difficult to get your head around the Celtic firing blanks statistic from a Thursday night full of arresting statistics.

A former swashbuckling team now finds it difficult to consistently blast its way out of a paper bag. A confident Motherwell will be in their sights on Sunday.

Brendan Rodgers’ side lost 2-0 at home to Braga on Thursday evening, which is only their fifth goalless start of the season. Celtic has never lost a goal this early in a season since 1991-92.

The message about Celtic’s creative struggles still resonates, of course, in the form of Kelechi Iheanacho’s strike, which was strangely ruled out for a ghost handball.

They are utterly out of sorts when they are attacked. Rodgers has accepted it as fact and says he needs to find a way to resolve it.

Celtic went goalless five times last season, but only once in 57 games, which is startling. Only four goals were scored in 53 games during Ange Postecoglou’s second season.

Hearts have scored almost twice as many goals as Celtic did in the Premiership. In the league, Motherwell, Dundee United, Hibs, Kilmarnock, and Livingston have all outscored Celtic. In the modern era, this kind of thing is uncommon.

Rodgers is a capable manager, and Sunday might be the start of that. Possibly . But he made a point about some of the team’s numbers from the previous season as a stark contrast before and after the defeat to Braga.

Over the past few years, Celtic have successfully sold a lot of goals and ingenuity. And they did a terrible job of relocating it.

There was a lot of danger ahead of the time of Jota-Kyogo Furuhashi-Liel Abada or Daizen Maeda-Kyogo-Nicolas Kuhn, who was a stellar Matt O’Riley.

There were some players who could create something that would open a obstinate defense even on the worst days of the game.

Kyogo excelled at it. He had almost 20 assists and 85 goals in his stature in that time. Another 39 goal involvements were made for the previous year and a half. O’Riley added another 27 goals and 30 assists.

Since Jota (15 goals and 12 assists in his final season) left for Al-Ittihad in summer 2023), Celtic has offloaded around 227 goals and 120 assists.

Many of those players were unpredictably unpredictable, with pace, vision, and speed. They frightened opponents. The X-factor existed. They consistently stayed at a high tempo, broke through defenses, and managed to turn a difficult 0-0 into a respectable victory.

Here’s something from earlier this year since some of them will take some time to complete because we’re going back a few seasons. In the Champions League game against Bayern Munich in February, Celtic scored twice. When Kuhn scored, he was still with Celtic. Maeda remained a true Maeda.

The xG (expected goals) metric isn’t for everyone, but it does tend to support what we know to be true with the help of statistical analysis.

In the first game, they won against Bayern, with an xG of 1.37 and 1.12 respectively. Although that is modest, they were excellent on the field.

It’s not rocket science. With a few exceptions, Celtic used to have really effective attackers, but they now don’t. Iheanacho has made a promising start through the middle while Sebastian Tounekti appears in the Jota mold.

To be honest, the rest is dull. Mada is only a shadow of himself because he eschewed the opportunity to move elsewhere in the summer. James Forrest, a 34-year-old, replaced him in Braga.

Despite Rodgers’ desperate for a goal, Michel-Ange Balikwisha and Johnny Kenny did not play for Braga. Shin Yamada and Callum Osmand, two summer signings, did not feel qualified enough to join Rodgers’ Europa League squad.

Reo Hatate is not the same person who was once at the heart of everything that made Celtic great.

The team’s legendary totem for years, Callum McGregor, has not spoken publicly. This season, he scored four goals. This season, he hasn’t scored.

Although Benjamin Nygren has scored and assisted, he doesn’t appear to have O’Riley’s skills for game design. Not yet.

McGregor correctly predicted that the new players were still adjusting to life at Celtic on Thursday night. He also claimed that the team needed to perform more quickly, slickly, and effectively in everything they did, and he was correct.

They are active all day. They are four points and five goals worse off in their first six games overall in terms of league form.

Paulo Bernardo and Hatate were the favorites to win the £11 million Arne Engels and Paulo Bernardo over Braga. Is Hatate now in trouble, or is it Engels, who has only started four games this season, because he didn’t really perform? Rodriguez hasn’t been able to extract the most from the Belgian.

It’s inevitable, but the manager doesn’t want to be drawn back into the discussion about Celtic’s subpar performance in the transfer window. It is present at every turn.

Rodgers has experienced disappointment over the loss of hamstring injury victim Alistair Johnston, who was also injured on August 20 and has been missing. The Celtic team has won just three of their eight games, but he has missed them all eight.

Colby Donovan, a teenager, has taken advantage of his opportunity in Colby’s absence, but Johnston, a strong defender, also gives Celtic’s attack more energy. He already had two goals and two assists last season at this point.

After the international break, Johnston will return, which Rodgers will be pleased to hear as he works through the issues.