There has been a cloud over Ibrox this season, failure to qualify for the Champions League, far from impressive domestic form and injuries to key players preventing any real momentum from being built up.
Our strikers have yet to, collectively and individually, find their best form and still, we are four points clear at the top of the Premiership table and just one goal behind Celtic in the goals for column despite their swashbuckling and highly acclaimed playing style.
Weirdly though, when you look at the numbers, we should have actually scored more and conceded less than at this time last season as Jaymes Monte from Arab Analytics discovered on Twitter:
What’s changed in the Scottish Premiership from last season to this season?
▪️Utd have improved defensively, but not a lot of change in chance creation.
▪️Livi and St J on the slide on both sides of the ball.
▪️Celtic improved in both.
▪️Ross C improved defensively. pic.twitter.com/X6UGHZAN3O
— Jaymes Monte (@ArabAnalytics) November 12, 2021
We have already conceded the same number of goals as we did in the whole of last season and yet our xGA – expected goals against – has dropped, we should have conceded fewer goals than at this stage in 2020/21 when our defence was breaking records all over the place.
This suggests that things will soon even themselves out and that the trend of conceding a goal from the only shot the opposition has on target every week will not last.
At the other end of the park it is a similar story, there are games – Hearts, Motherwell, Aberdeen – where we should have been out of sight but were pegged back or dropped points because we missed too many chances, it’s the fine margins that have cost us so far this season.
Perception is everything though and dropping points usually means that removing emotion from analysis is almost impossible, however, as the figures show, we are on the right track to repeating the feats of last season, the next run of fixtures will hopefully see us lay down a marker and remind the rest of the league why we are champions.