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Very very poor, in shock, shaky- Stephen Welsh’s Scotland u-21 assessment

Photo of Joe McHugh Joe McHugh | 09:34 28/03/22
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Stephen Welsh has delivered a scathing attack on the professionalism and application of the Scotland u-21 squad. 

Friday’s 2-0 defeat at home to Turkey was very generous on the hosts who are fourth in their five team group with no suggestion that there are players bubbling away ready to break through. 

Aaron Hickey’s refusal to be part of the squad is probably a decent indication of what is going on, a view that Steve Clarke appears to share by giving the Bologna defender his first full cap without featuring for the u-21s. 

Hickey picked up three caps at u-17 level, skipped u-19 and u-21 to go into the full squad, escaping the politics and policies of the SFA to find his feet in Serie A with bigger clubs than Bologna showing interest in his ability. 

While the full team celebrated a 1-1 draw with Turkey the Scotland u-17s, u-19s and u-21s were losing 9-0 on aggregate to Turkey, Germany an Hungary.

Welsh has played through all levels of the SFA machine but after a season as part of Ange Postecoglou’s squad- starting 22 matches- there is a clear drop off when it comes to standards in the Scotland u-21 set-up. 

Reflecting on the defeat from Turkey, the Celtic defender told The Scotsman: 

That first-half performance was one of, if not the worst I’ve seen from a Scotland team at any age group.

From past experience going through the age groups 17s, 19s and now 21s, even if a side is better than you – you still work harder than them.

I don’t think we worked 50 per cent to what Turkey did, although they were very good players.

We weren’t aggressive enough, didn’t think we applied ourselves enough at all and on the ball I think we were very, very poor. We looked in shock when we got the ball, we were shaky and maybe a bit of nervousness but I think we need to move on from that now.

We’ll analyse the game over the next couple of days but we’ve got a massive game against Kazakhstan coming up and we can’t lose that, we need to go out and win.

Asked about the issues, he added:

Not working hard enough. Not giving 100 per cent in my opinion. As I said, we need to look back on that and see but then again they are very good on the ball, we didn’t get within three or four yards of them every time they got the ball. 

The centre-halves were really comfortable, they didn’t have any pressure on them at all, midfielders I thought we made them look really good although the quality they have got is good. We weren’t getting tight enough, not aggressive enough and simply not good enough. 

Peter Houston stood in for Scot Gemmill managing the squad against Turkey. The Scotland squad were on three flights for tomorrow’s fixture against Kazakhstan with the match kicking off at noon Celtic Park Time. 

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Joe McHugh

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