Early Premiership Player of the Season stats show surprise Celtic man out in front but Rangers ace closing in
Three Celtic players are in the early running for the Scottish Premiership’s top performer along with one Rangers and one Aberdeen man.
Celtic extended their lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership over nearest challengers Aberdeen with a 1-0 win at Pittodrie last night.
It means the Hoops are now seven points clear of the high flying Dons with a game in hand. However, Rangers sent out a clear message with a six goal hammering of Kilmarnock which keeps them 11 points behind their Glasgow rivals and closes the gap on Jimmy Thelin’s side to just four points, again with a game in hand.
It will come as no surprise, given that they have won all of their league matches this season except for one which was a 2-2 draw with the Dons at Celtic Park, that Brendan Rodgers’ players currently dominate the Scottish Premiership Team of the Season so far based on statistics gathered by WhoScored. Indeed, there are a whopping seven players in the best XI compared to Rangers’ one representative while Aberdeen also have just one and, perhaps surprisingly, Dundee United have two inclusions.
There is also one player, from Celtic, who currently stands head and shoulders above the rest of the league with the highest average match rating across the season so far. However, Rangers biggest stand out is closing that gap and there are other Celtic players as well Aberdeen’s top performer in the mix.
Per WhoScored, the best player in the Scottish Premiership so far this season is Liam Scales who has an average match rating of 7.8 out of 10. That is a good bit higher than teammate Nicolas Kuhn who sits on 7.65 for the season so far but it’s close enough that the German winger could easily overtake him in the next few matches.
Another player sits joint second in the standings with 7.65 and that is Rangers’ James Tavernier who, despite having his critics this season, statistically still ranks as Philippe Clement’s star man. The next closest players are Celtic skipper Callum McGregor on 7.59 and Aberdeen midfielder Jamie McGrath on 7.5.
In terms of a combined XI for the season so far, this is how it would look according to WhoScored based on average match ratings:
- GK - Kasper Schmeichel (Celtic) - 7.1
- RB - James Tavernier (Rangers) - 7.6
- LB - Greg Taylor (Celtic) - 7.6
- CB - Cameron Carter-Vickers (Celtic) - 7.4
- CB - Liam Scales (Celtic) - 7.8
- CM - Callum McGregor (Celtic) - 7.6
- CM - Jamie McGrath (Aberdeen) - 7.5
- RM - Nicolas Kuhn (Celtic) - 7.6
- LM - Will Ferry (Dundee United) - 7.3
- ST - Sam Dalby (Dundee United) - 7.1
- ST - Kyogo Furuhashi (Celtic) - 7.0
Other stats gathered by the site show that Celtic are dominating many key categories such as overall average Possession which sits at 67.76% with Rangers second with 60%, Aerial Duels Won which sits at 56.8% with Aberdeen second on 51.9%, Shots per Game which sits at 20.4 with Rangers second on 17.8 and Passing Accuracy which sits a a impressive 88.4% with Rangers again second on 84.8%.