A few months after being hammered 3-0 by Morocco at the World Cup Finals in France Craig Brown took comfort from the defeat by explaining that Scotland had beaten the north Africans on corners.
Unfortunately for Brown there is no World Cup for corner counts but the trend to take consolation from statistics was established.
With five matches left in the SPFL season Celtic have a 13 point lead and a goal difference advantage of plus 31. In any language that is a huge gap but Micky Beale seems to view things differently.
Football is a sport of fine margins, of taking your chances, of scoring at one end and not conceding. When Beale arrived in November the gap was nine points, four more have been added on his watch.
Reluctantly praising Kyogo Furuhashi in the Daily Record, the Ibrox boss seemed keen to pull out some stats that won’t provide any trophies or medals at the end of the season.
They have won two competitions and he has been the outstanding player. He has taken his chances. There is a stat on how we’ve had the most shots and the most shots on target. We’re not a million miles away from Celtic either when it comes to clean sheets.
But a clinical number nine is one the reasons why Celtic have done well this season. He’s obviously an excellent player.
Celtic have lost 25 goals in the SPFL, seven of them from the penalty spot. Beale’s side have conceded 34 goals with no penalties awarded against them in their last 51 league matches.
The truth is, he’s right! As long as he knows they have the guaranteed support of the sfa, spfl, V(ideo) A(ssiting) R(angers), he knows they are as close as they can be.
Let’s not forget, prior to committing to the new club, beale stated he was waiting for assurances that he would have full support and backing. While some thought he meant from the club, the rest of the world knew full well he meant from the sfa/spfl!
In the games between the clubs since Micky bealed into the Ibrox hotseat, the stats are: them 34 shots, Celtic 31, them 10 on target Celtic 14 on target (BBC stats). So that can’t be the stat he’s looking for.
Maybe it’s the overall shots/shots OT in the league? But nah, then it would be highly unlikely that we;d scored 22 more than them, if they were getting so many on target.
Then again, all he says is “there is a stat”. Maybe the stat comes from glasgowlive’s “simulations” of upcoming games on FIFA23 or whatever game it is they use.
That would make sense: a fictitious club using fictitious stats from a fictitious game played by fictitious journalists. Sounds about par for the course for them: lies all the way down.
The mooch is Clutching at straws and pulling the short one!!!! All that matters at the end of the season is trophies, no one remembers or cares about the also rans – Uber for Beale but only if it’s a free one…… it’s football so do your talking on the pitch or you inevitably end up with egg on your face if