Daizen Maeda

Well, it should be but this year hasn’t quite gone to plan

 

Bcoz our wingers arnt good enough at the moment to allow Rodgers to play him in his natural position

 

I think everybody knows what he brings to the team in terms of work rate, so people can stop with that pish excuse. But we're a team who dominates the ball in the vast majority of matches. Certainly almost every domestic match. Our wingers should be players who get fans excited. Players who regularly create chances and score goals. He has 1 goal and 1 assist in his last 13 leagues games. It's dire, and no amount of "aye, but" will change that. Those are the sort of numbers we'd rip the pish out of Ryan Kent for.

He's worth his weight in gold when it comes to stopping someone like Tavernier or if he's matched up against a good wide player in Europe where we're expecting to be under the cosh. But that's what he is - a fantastic defensive winger.

When he's up against a team who sit back and defend, and don't have a threat that requires Maeda to cancel out...he's more often than not completely wasted.

It's hard not to love him because his work rate and attitude. But there's absolutely no way he should be starting every game for us as a winger. The fact he does simply highlights how rotten and underequipped we are in those positions.

 

Hatate and O’Riley should be getting us excited, not just wingers. When they don’t, they offer nothing.

Maeda offers something every game he plays. He’s everywhere. The amount he tracks back and wins us the ball in great positions is massively under appreciated. The problem is what we do with it when he’s won it, we * about and Hart normally ends up with the ball.

His end product isn’t great but is an easy fix and that’s getting him to keep it simple, which he rarely does.

I don’t know why people have an obsession with picking a random cut off for stats to prove an argument. He’s got 20 goals and 13 assists in 81 games which is pretty good. The goals and assists have been coming from elsewhere recently while he does what he does.

I also don’t understand why people simplify football stats into goals and assists as if that’s all that matters in a game. His defensive stats are ridiculous. If you compare him to Jota last year he had a higher conversion rate. So how wasteful is he? He will blast a couple over and score one but he’s not taking a lot of shots. Just think people are far too narrow minded. We need Palma to produce the numbers like Jota did, because nobody moaned about Maeda when he was in the team.

 

I’m absolutely fine with him being part of our best 11 but he needs to be complemented by a winger with a touch of class on the other side. He would also benefit from having a full back who can overlap with regularity.

Thought he played well against Lazio so not sure why this thread is going off

 

Plenty moaned about him being in the team when Jota was there too so don't know where that's coming from.

Uv kinda of contradicted yourself by saying you don't know why people focus on stats and then say his 20 goals in 81 games is pretty good.
It's 1 goal in his last 17 which is absolutely awful.

Fed up with people using his defensive stats as an excuse for him to play every game. Domestically we don't need a winger who's main attribute is defending, we have 75% of the ball most weeks so we need wingers who create chances and score goals. In the last 17 games he's done very little of that

 

You’ve just proven every argument I made. Cherry picked 17 games out of nowhere when the reality is his overall numbers show he’s got far more to his game.

I didn’t say I don’t know why people focus on stats, I said they simplify stats. Football is far more than goals and assists. It’s also key passes, progession, duels, dribbling and much more.

We don’t have a midfielder winning the ball back as much as they should be, he’s doing it. Get a CDM who does his job and you can get another goalscoring winger.

The argument “we don’t need” makes no sense at all. A part of the reason we have the possession we do is because of him. We need our other winger to produce. That dynamic worked wonders with him and Jota or Abada and they could also switch wings. If the other winger and Kyogo are producing, nobody moans about Maeda. Maeda also produces more when the other winger is firing. This isn’t rocket science, he’s not the problem.

 

Not really. He was also crucial to Japan's success in the World Cup against world class opposition.

We're not able to sign a team of players with technical ability equal to that of Lazio, RB Leipzig, Leverkusen, etc. So we need to complete with them in other ways, and the energy, pressing, defensive work, ability to stretch defences, etc. which Maeda provides can definitely be an element of that.

 

How are the 17 games cherry picked? Those are the last 17 he's played. The only European goal he's scored in 14 apps was on his debut v Bodo, since then he's had numerous chances and often doesn't come close to hitting the target, like when he fluffed that golden chance v Real or the tame effort the other night.

For me it's a surprise when he scores, it shouldn't ever be like that for one of Celtic's front 3.

 

Exactly. People complain that Palma is not quick enough, that Maeda's technique is garbage, that Yang has poor decision-making, etc. If they didn't have these flaws, it's likely they would have been snapped up by clubs in better leagues. We can only rarely get a player who is well-rounded in his positional attributes.

What would help though, is adapting the playing style to this reality.

 

Everyone knows what he brings to the team.

They’re just of the opinion that the trade off of barely being able to control a football isn’t worth it in 95% of the games we play.

 

This is bang on the head. I find it strange that people seem to take offemce to it tbh.

 

Maeda really is a funny one for me now.

All last season, I was annoyed that we werent playing him in his favoured position - through the middle. He played there for his last club and for Japan and is why he was getting many goals.
In fact, for us, most of his attacking play and opportunities (and thus goals) came when he was running through the middle and not sitting out wide as a winger/wide forward.

But this season, he really is highlighting he work rate and defensive abilities and is making it hard to say he should be dropped. However, is this because of the issues we have at left back? And a team like us, who ideally wants to be playing with a very attacking and fluid front three, should we be settling for having a wide man being here just because he helps out defensively? Because he is getting worse and worse as an attacking option now.
His crossing for a wide man is woeful, hence last season screaming for him to play through the middle. But even recently when he is coming through the middle, he is equally as woeful as those crosses.
Think that was twice the other night he was through on the keeper and he has no composure or great technical ability it seems to be able to round a keeper or be able to shoot with some technique to be able to beat the keeper.

As someone else has said earlier, it is now expected that he will fluff these chances and I don't get excited when I see him running through on goal any more. I am more inclined to be looking to see who is supporting him to hopefully help him, or at least get on any scraps from a pitiful effort on goal.

Abada being out is an issue, but I honestly believe if we have everyone fit for the wide areas, we need to be looking at Abada on the right and Palma on the left.
Yang, Forrest, Maeda, Mikey are the support acts.
Not to mention the mystery man that is Tilio - whoever the * he becomes in the future.

 

Only thing I can say on that is from the very little that I saw (colts game against ayr)
Tilio was tiny but looked decent, that being said mikey Johnston on the other wing looked MILES ahead. Now again it was against Ayr so wouldn’t read too much into it but I wouldn’t be against Johnston getting some minutes out wide, he’s tricky quick n can create chances. Even if we haven’t seen it in a Celtic shirt in a while the appearances he’s had for Ireland he’s been the best player each time (also not the hardest). Maybe mj one wing and Palma the other would give a nice balance between the two of speed creativity and end product from palma