Worse than Idah: Rodgers must finally ditch 5/10 Celtic dud who lost 88% duels

Celtic drew with Atalanta after suffering a crushing 7-1 defeat to Borussia Dortmund in their previous Champions League meeting.

The Hoops fought hard in Italy to achieve a 0-0 draw against the Serie A side, with Kasper Schmeichel making a series of excellent stops to retain a clean sheet.

Brendan Rodgers’ team, on the other hand, rarely threatened at the top end of the pitch, creating only one ‘big opportunity’ to Atalanta’s seven and generating 0.26 xG in total.

Before kickoff, the Northern Irish manager made a brave decision to replace Kyogo Furuhashi in the centre-forward position with Adam Idah, which had mixed results.

Adam Idah’s performance by numbers

The Ireland international was reportedly brought in for his physicality and ability to keep the ball up from Schmeichel’s long kicks to relieve pressure.

It worked well at times, with Idah winning three of his five duels throughout the game, allowing the Celtic defence to push up and have a break from defending for extended periods of time.

However, the 6 foot 3 marksman lacked the threat that Kyogo provides in the final third and struggled to turn things around for the Scottish giants when the ball crossed the halfway line.

Idah finished the game with no shots on goal, no crucial passes, and a 74% pass success rate, indicating that the forward struggled to make an impact in possession.

He was not Celtic’s worst attacker on the pitch, however, as Daizen Maeda delivered another poor performance on the left wing.

Why should Daizen Maeda be dropped?

Following a streak of poor performances, the Japan international must be pulled from the team. In his last three appearances in all competitions, the winger has performed poorly.

In those three games, he has lost 17 of 22 duels and failed to provide a goal or an assist for his team, as well as squandering one ‘great chance’ in front of the net.

When you look at Maeda’s match statistics, it’s clear to see why the Scotsman gave him a 5/10 rating while giving Auston Trusty and Liam Scales 10/10 scores.

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As shown in the table above, the Japanese dud lost 88% of his duels with Atalanta players during the match because he was too light to win physical clashes.

He also failed to generate a single chance for his teammates and completed only 57% of his attempted passes, allowing the home side to dominate the game.

As a result, Maeda performed even worse than Idah, who completed a reasonable proportion of his passes and dominated his physical duels, and should be pulled from the starting lineup after many poor performances.

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