Ryan Christie Celtic Stats Prove Player is Pivotal

Hibs have presented the hardest test for Celtic teams since the Edinburgh side got promoted back to the SPFL.

A lot of people had them tipped to be challenging for second place this season, for many reasons that did not work out as planned. One of those reasons was Neil Lennon. The Irishman didn’t leave under the best of circumstances but couldn’t even dream that he would return to Easter Road as a Celtic manager two months later.

Celtic’s last performance at Easter Road was one of their better ones under the new interim manager. Celtic brushed Hibs aside with a 0-2 win. If you believe in stats or patterns, the Irishman will have his work cut out in Edinburgh this afternoon to try and break some recent trends.

Celtic have alternated between a win and a defeat in their last five Scottish Premiership matches against Hibs (W3 D0 L2).

Hibernian have only lost one of their previous six home league games against Celtic (W3 D2), winning each of the last two. They’ve never won three consecutive home matches against them in the Scottish Premiership.

Hibernian are unbeaten in their last eight league games (W6 D2 L0) – their longest unbeaten since a run of 12 matches without defeat between January and May 2018 (W8 D4).

The good news for Celtic is that they have players like Tom Rogic, Benkovic and Kieran Tierney all back from injury. Ryan Christie was back in the team last week until he suffered horrible facial injuries against Aberdeen.  His absence shouldn’t be underplayed though; the midfielder was directly involved in eight goals in his nine league games in 2019, more than any other Celtic player this year. Dominic Ball ending the player’s season during the Scottish Cup Semi-Final is a huge blow.