The incredible stats which highlights Celtic's dominance and make them best in Europe - Rangers score highly but well behind

Celtic faced criticsim in certain quarters for their level of performance during the season just past.

Celtic dominated possession last season. Picture: SNS

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However, having won the treble in the previous two seasons to such high standards it is difficult to maintain such standards.

Yet, stats from CIES Football Observatory show that their dominance remained on their way to their eighth title in a row and to treble treble success.

Celtic dominated possession last season. Picture: SNS

No team in 31 European leagues analysed bettered Celtic's average of 66.8 per cent possession per game. The figure becomes more impressive when you consider the teams closest to them in the ranking: Manchester City, Shakhtar Donetsk, Bayern Munich, FC Salzburg and Barcelona.

The Scottish champions feature prominently in other factors researched.

They were sixth for the number of shots on target per game with 7.4, fifth for accurate passes in the opponent third per domestic league match (173.2) and eighth for accuracy of passes with a 87.9 per cent success rate.

Rivals Rangers scored highly in a couple of indicators Steven Gerrard's men were 15th in Europe for shots on target with an average of 6.9 per domestic league match, just behind Barcelona and Manchester City.

They were also in the top 20 for ball possession, averaging 59.5 per cent par game.