Why Scotland's performance was 'one of the worst' witnessed by Celtic star

When there is a game as big as Rangers against Celtic at Ibrox on the horizon you would imagine it would be an occasion that is difficult to put to the back of the mind, especially for those involved in the huge Premiership encounter.

For Stephen Welsh, who will likely be part of Ange Postecoglou’s squad, the fixture seemed like it couldn’t be further away on Friday night at Tynecastle Park as he discussed Scotland Under-21s 2-0 loss to Turkey in the European Championship qualifier.

The Celtic centre-back was left exasperated by the defeat, which all but ended the team’s slim chances of catching Denmark in second. They now go to Kazakhstan fourth in the group.

He offered up a one-word answer as to why Scotland were so poor against a Turkey side who arguably deserved to win by more: “Application”.

"That first-half performance was one of, if not the worst I’ve seen from a Scotland team at any age group,” said Walsh, who included himself in his criticism, taking the blame for the second goal which he deflected past Cieran Slicker.

“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.”

He added: “Not working hard enough. Not