Stephen Welsh
Stephen Welsh signed a contract extension this week to 2025 with Celtic. Does this make sense from a football perspective? This was discussed on The Huddle Breakdown podcast. Please subscribe and share.
Firstly, before considering performance, let me say the contract makes absolutely no sense in the context of Celtic having no permanent manager currently. Who is deciding Welsh is part of future plans and has the playing profile required of the new manager? Putting this dysfunctionality aside, what do the performance numbers suggest?
I use Defensive Action Success Rate and Possession Win % (from defensive actions) as the defensive action benchmark for central defenders. Welsh plots as follows:
As you can see Welsh plots below average not being categorised within the middle class of Boyata, Simunovic and Sviatchenko (latter two not plotted for space reasons) and being closer to Ambrose and Hendry in the sad bottom left corner.
Not encouraging but as well as sample size being just over 12 matches, there is one key metric driving this outcome. Aerial duels. Welsh does not profile like your average SPFL centre back purely on height. He seems 5’10 or 5’11 at most.
Welsh has had 26 unsuccessful aerial duels in just over 12 appearances. For context, Ajer had 29 unsuccessful aerial duels in 19/20 in 48 appearances. And Ajer isn’t particularly aerially dominant.
For balance he has not lost a single ground duel. This is helped by the fact he rarely attempts progressive runs like Ajer therefore isn’t tackled in the opponent’s half like the Norwegian. Still, it looks like what he lacks in height he makes up for with tackling ability.
An area he has noticeably developed since breaking into the team is progressive passing. I measure Pack Passes (forward passes taking out opponents). The average for a centre back in recent cadres is 6.65 per 90m with “good” being Bitton on 9.69. Welsh is averaging 11.32 pack passes per 90m.
His passes are not particularly long or risky. Typical would be in the recent win versus Livingston where he completed 16 Pack passes but 9 were to Kenny. But this typically takes out 1 or 2 forward opponents and break the initial press.
Additionally, his error rate is what I’d call within tolerance. Anything below 0.5 defensive errors per 90m is ok with me and he averages 0.47, similar to Jullien.
The eye test tells me he is a composed player who simplifies the game and doesn’t over reach like e.g. Duffy.
Conclusion
Putting aside the decision-making vacuum at the club and my bewilderment as to who is deciding Welsh fits a future managers’ preferred style, the Welsh extension makes sense.
I can’t see him being first choice but better to have a locally developed kid on £5-8k a week rather than spending £2m on a foreign import on £15k a week as back up. He won’t grow much bigger but then it may be more important to have an uncluttered, solid defender with decent progressive passing than another Jullien clone.
Good luck, Stephen.