Celtic v Dundee

Dundee look to close the gap on title rivals Celtic to 3 points this afternoon as they travel to Celtic Park.

Form

One would think that with current form it will be a straight forward 3 points, but plucky Celtic will be looking to upset Europe's current top manager and player, Hartley and Clarkson respectively.

Dundee go into the game averaging 3 goals every away game recently, a record only matched by the great Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, and possibly Barcelona of 2011. Celtic on the other hand have struggled for goals at home. Going down 1-0 to top 6 rivals Hamilton and cagey 1-0 and 2-0 wins against bottom six rivals ICT and Killie respectively.

Key Players

Although the Barcelona side of 2011 may have been able to match this Dundee side as a team on a whole, they cannot rival this Dundee side for a stand out individual.

The David Clarkson v Lionel Messi threads on here have become a bit tedious over the last few years but I think finally people are starting to admit that Clarkson is the more complete player and has proved it in more than one league. Would Messi hack the physicality of Inverness away at 12 on a Sunday? Absolutely no chance.


Anyway, here are the stats.

Goals to game ratio (all games for their club)

Messi: 0.8
Clarkson: 1

The stats show that Clarkson has been a better player than Messi during their respective careers at their clubs. Clarkson has also proved it in more than one cold Tuesday league.


More stats

Scoring runs.

Clarkson: 6 games in a row
Ronaldo: 1 game in a row
Messi: 0 games in a row
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Chris Kommons: 0 games in a row
George Guidetti: 0 games in a row


As you can see David Clarkson is some distance ahead of his closest rivals in Europe and way ahead of anything Celtic have to offer. The closest Celtic have to Clarkson I guess would be Geroge Guidetti, who has struggled for goals at Celtic so far, currently on an unimpressive run of 0 goals in a row. Do you think he will ever step up to the plate and emulate the legendary David Clarkson?

Anyway, both clubs have now gone over 5 months without a trophy and this fixture is the one everyone looks to as being the title decider, even this early on in the season. If Dundee win they will open up a -3 point gap on Celtic and surely even this early, will be uncatchable.

All of the stats point to a comfortable Dundee win for me, with at least 2 goals from Ballon D'OR elect David Clarkson.


Prediction

Celtic 4-0 Dundee