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Daily Record
Daily Record
Sport
Steven Mair

Stephen Welsh fronts up as Celtic star brands Scotland U21 performance one of nation's worst 'at any age'

Embarrassed Stephen Welsh branded the Under-21s' showing against Turkey one of the worst Scotland performances at any age.

The Celtic defender fronted up after his side were outclassed at Tynecastle in a 2-0 defeat that all but ended their hopes of qualifying for next year's Euros.

Welsh, 21, scored an own goal to round off the loss and it means they trail the Turks along with Belgium and Denmark in Group I.

The defender expected the visitors in Edinburgh to be full of class but was shocked by the lack of effort Scotland showed.

He said: "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.

"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."

Captain Welsh must now get his side up for a trip to bottom side Kazakhstan and the Parkhead centre-back insists he's not allowing the upcoming derby against Rangers to distract him.

He added: "It’s no secret that there is a big game coming round the corner but for me it’s about Kazakhstan and I can focus on Celtic after that."

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