Celtic winger, Mikey Johnston, has been impressing on international duty once more after he put in a Man of the Match performance for the Republic of Ireland last night.
TBR Celtic told earlier this morning how the Irish media questioned why he wasn’t getting more game time under Brendan Rodgers so I decided to have a look at Johnston’s stats in last night’s 1-1 draw with New Zealand to see what all the fuss was about.
Rated a 7.7 by football stats site, Fotmob, Johnston excelled despite the Irish struggles to overcome New Zealand.
In the 79 minutes he spent on the pitch, Johnston had 60 touches with a passing accuracy of 85%. The Celtic winger created five chances but only had one shot on target himself.
Johnston made three passes into the final third as he tried to penetrate his opponent’s backline but out of five attempted dribbles, only three were successful.
Only three out of seven of Johnston’s crosses found a green shirt of Ireland (43%) but he did manage to execute two out of two long balls.
Defensively, the 24-year-old Celtic player won 50% of his eight duels, made one clearance, five ball recoveries and completed one defensive action.
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So overall it was a well-rounded performance. But let’s not forget, like his last impressive performance for Ireland against Gibraltar, this is only New Zealand.
They are ranked 103 in the world so Johnston should be capable of putting in a performance of this nature against one of FIFA’s minnows.
But can we really use his performances against the smaller nations as a stick to beat him with? After all, how many times do we hear people say that Celtic can only beat who is in front of them when pundits try to diminish their incredible domination of Scottish football?
Maybe to find his true potential, Johnston does need to leave Celtic to gain regular football. Then and only then can his ability be fairly assessed.
But it does look to me as if his time in Paradise may well be coming to an end.
In other news, Two red cards, penalty shootout, VAR… 23-year-old Celtic player’s night of incredible Nations League drama