Edinburgh Derby Saturday presents an opportunity to flush out a bit on Wilfried Nancy's recent comments on "luck."
The concept of variance is one to which I have returned regularly the past few seasons, including trying to break out variability between factors teams control vs those they do not.
For example, teams control, at least indirectly, the level of player they employ as strikers and keepers, which impact finishing and shot stopping. There is variability around those factors, but there is a degree of agency.
Examples of uncontrollable factors

Mostly keep this kind of info hidden away from delicate sensibilities over at @huddlebreakdown these days but desperate times and all that.

Sorry - it's a lot of games so you'll have to minimize/maximize The Cup Final was bad, and was critical of various elements of selection, tactics, substitutions. Roma was not much different than Atalanta last season...only Atalanta couldn't hit the broad side of a barn that day, so goats became heroes.
The disparity in goals vs

This was shortly after an article doing a deep dive on Rangers' analytics setup at the time was published in The Athletic and I had stopped doing Good Bad & Ugly game threads.

Coming up on 4 years later and Thelwell's just-released interview makes it likely they are still

https://twitter.com/jucojames/status/1482341382190686212

operating in a manager-centric way.

As referenced, the hiring of Jaymes Monte an indication they are looking to progress, and I guess it is plausible the "manager has final say on recruitment" framing could be a PR strategy.

Stopped GBU once I was convinced Ange had the team

@Alan_Morrison67 brought my attention to the sacking of Midtjylland's manager in late August as the club were on a 17 game unbeaten run.

Their chairman said at the time:

"But it is not about the results, but about the fact that our standing has not developed in the desired

https://twitter.com/huddlebreakdown/status/1989167125492371710

direction over a long period of time."

I am not suggesting something similar is likely or imminent, but it is a heuristic for what I keep chronicling relative to McInnes and Hearts.

Huge difference is Hearts' executive team are new to the operating model and probably

Sentiment is understandably skeptical on every move, but cleaning house of legacy scouting and recruitment personnel is a good sign on a relative basis, IMO.

Even with the DD-as-de-facto-DoF the quality of talent ID and profiling has been erratic and poor.

Good luck to Swansea

https://twitter.com/celticway1888/status/1988227752655237381

It is possible that DD has finally woken up a bit on a relative basis?

In a column from July where I reviewed his September 2020 interview published in The Athletic, he referenced his view on collective responsibility and reticence to fire people.

Is he going to fire himself?

Our @huddlebreakdown audience can attest to the fact that I began commenting that Hearts could have a legit opportunity to win the 2025-2026 season back in February.

I even bet some money on them when they were at 25-1 odds...obviously not because I am "rooting" for them

https://twitter.com/HeraldSportScot/status/1971836782150144353

but because I thought it was badly mispriced...well McKinlay's interview with @mcgowan_stephen makes me feel better about recent decision to have already banked that mispricing.

He speaks with a forked toungue, as has McInnes at times in public. They seem to be engaged in some

Harry has been all over this for many years and @celticrumours is well worth both the free and paid subscriptions on Substack.

I can supplement his point due to a long history of studying inflation, which is a massive factor in analyzing companies and financial markets.

https://twitter.com/HarryBradyCU/status/1947247400877257016

First of all modern western governments pretty much all lie about inflation as a way to cheat on long term entitlement costs. That is a different and hugely important topic, but probably good for 2-4% above what they report.

The Cantillion effect is a concept which states that

I have been thinking about how to go about doing this review and have settled on doing it in segments. My goal is to lay out an analytical framework for measuring historical performance for Celtic in order to offer context for making performance assessments. This first segment will lay out the framework and why I am doing this. I decided to look into this as an extension of the analysis I started doing on the recent Celtic seasons about 18 months ago. Like when I began 18 months ago, I didn't have a good sense of what an analysis would yield.

Time for the good, the bad, & the ugly from yesterday's Celtic at St Johnstone game. Had a long morning of driving today so a bit late posting. Non-penalty xG was 1.94 vs 0.34 on 10 vs 5 shots. That differential of 1.60 was very close to the avg I shared ahead of the game- 1.51 So I would characterize the overall output as fine. Similar to the St Mirren game, the dispersion of performance levels in the game was skewed late, as had 0.94 xG before Edouard's 1st goal, with 0.40 of that coming on the Duffy chance off the Turnbull free kick delivery.

Performance benchmarking for today's Celtic at St Johnstone game. Non-penalty xG had avg 2.23 vs 0.72 on 17.70 shots in Perth. Celticnhave outperformed that avg xG by averaging 3 goals over the 9 league games since the start of the 2015-2016 season.

St. Johnstone are probably the oddest statistically team in the league this season, as they are currently 3rd in xG differential overall after Rangers and Celtic, and have conceded about the same amountof non-penalty xG per 90 minutes as Celtic.

However, their finishing & keeper play have been very poor.

Time for the good, the bad, & the ugly from yesterday's Celtic vs Rangers game. Non-penalty xG was 0.14 vs 1.26. To address one of the hot topics coming out of the game, next tweet shows other games with low number of shots on target since Deila's last season-only gladbach @ home A reminder that event-based xG models are just one of many analytical tools. For example, Wyscout's assigned very low probability to Moi's chance. As has been the case this season generally, we lacked attacking output from midfield and the two "strikers."

Performance benchmarking in advance of tomorrow's big game: first some ranking models. 538's SPI currently has Celtic at 52 and Rangers at 99, which places them just behind Sporting and Braga for some context. The Elo system I monitor has Celtic at 37 and Rangers up to 51. The derby games the past two seasons have been very tight both with regards to goals and underlying performance metrics. Back to Wyscout data today to go back to 16/17 season, and we can see the shift in relative derby performances pre and post Gerrard/Beale arrival.

Warning- this is a nerdy thread on long range shots and why I worry about Celtic's shooting. I hear repeatedly that Christie is a good shooter so I thought I would examine his record from shots outside the box and the penalty arc. I reviewed 17-18 at Aberdeen & 18-19/19-20. Christie had 274 non-penalty shots over that time with 147 outside the area. He had about 56% of his shots outside the area under McInnes and last season under Lennon, while 48% in the hybrid season under Rodgers/Lennon in 18-19. He scored 8 goals on aggregate of 4.62 xG...

Time for the good, the bad, and the ugly from yesterday's Celtic vs Ferencvaros game. Wyscout had the game at 1.72-0.31 xG with 25 vs 7 shots, 8 vs 3 on target, and pretty much 70-30% possession. I would say that the main good is that despite Lennon's post-game comments, players appear to have played hard overall. I think players generally seemed to try to make the best of flawed selection and tactics. I am not going to slaughter players who are not good enough at no fault of their own, or playing out of position for the umpteenth time.

I will summarize the stats later today but want to address the Celtic "macro" first, as it is far more important than yesterday's game, CL, or even 10iar. The long term state of the club is now very fragile, as the risks I have been describing are now being unleashed. This is a huge problem. As I stated on @celticrumours risks grow over time and then are typically realized fast. The last decade resulted in massive risks building due to the march to 10iar in a league that had no viable competition for most of that time.

Time for the good, the bad, and the ugly from yesterday's Celtic vs Dundee Utd game. I'll start with the fact the game was no where near the Kilmarnock performance and within the context of a 38 game season, would characterize it as "fine". Initial report was xG 2.74-0.28. Two performances standout as good with caveats. The most impactful player in the game was Christie, and the overwhelming nature of his impact was good. He won 17 of 31 duels & 0.47 xG. The caveat, which I am sure most are already aware- shooting.

This morning's "fun" is looking at whether Celtic's opponents respect our "authoritah" enough. Passes Per Defensive Action (PPDA) is supposed to be a statistical proxy for a team's pressing intensity. Conversely, PPDA Against is to measure how intense opponents press. The first graphic shows Celtic vs various clubs in domestic league games only for 2019-2020. I've selected the clubs based upon those with large financial advantages over their leagues and those that are dominant statistically. We can see where Celtic stackup as a "dominant" club

Time for the good, the bad and the ugly from yesterday. Given the nature of the game, I will naturally focus upon the latter 2 first. Yesterday was Celtic's lowest xG output, 0.30, in a league game through the 15/16 season, according to Wyscout. That's too high, IMO. They have Eddie's injury time shot from just inside the 18 at 0.11 xG despite having 2 defenders right on top of him- shot was blocked. Killie were similarly on 🔥 with npxG of 0.42- an absolute disgrace to watch, generally. I projected selection and tactics would be wrong- yuck.

My analysis of Scott Brown was referenced on the latest @celticrumours podcast. I've largely avoided revisiting the topic since March, as I know it goes over like a wet fart with most supporters. However, @HarryBradyCU mentioned something on the pod which has "sucked me back in." Warning- this is a long thread. While @lawrencedonegan brought up my analysis on Brown, it was the discussion pertaining to Lennon and Edouard which is the catalyst for this thread. Comments about Edouard's dejection after the horrific defeats at home to Cluj and Copenhagen....

Thread on markets update- I've shared various "setups" for potential exhaustion and reversals for what I believe is a bear market rally. I am hearing/reading from all sorts of people I know and follow about a "crazy" paradox. Most are asking what the hell is going on? How can the stock market go up like this given the economic carnage? Cycle peaks are often messy even when a global pandemic isn't involved, and as my comments the past 2 months have clearly shown, the path is often confusing and difficult to navigate. Some examples from history: