Liam Scales has perhaps become an emblem of the Celtic recruitment debacles of this season. And that is unfair on the player himself.

Objectively, based on Ange Postecoglou’s preferences last season, you could make a case for him being up to the eigth choice centre-back at the club when Brendan Rodgers took over.

A freakish combination of sales and injuries have propelled Scales into the starting eleven, where to his credit and thanks to a continuing run of centre-back unavailability, he has effectively stayed ever since the home game versus St Johnstone on August 26. Since then, he has missed just a single game, last Saturday's match against St Johnstone.

Like his predecessor, Carl Starfelt, Scales suffers a little from an untidy gait and awkwardness, especially on the ball. Despite being around six foot three inches tall, he seems to struggle under the high ball on occasion and the long pass in behind him is not without consternation.

Statsbomb Profile

All that being said, as one might expect he profiles well on Statsbomb.

He has a high volume of aerial wins – in the 98th percentile but only 69 per cent are won (73rd percentile). His overall on ball value is high at 0.28 mainly driven by a high passing OBV (0.17) and dribble and carry OBV (0.13). I’d take issue with the outcome of this as we will see later. Also, these actions are reflective of team style – most other SPFL sides play a high degree of long balls.

As mentioned in the past, comparing Celtic and Rangers players against the rest of the league produces “false” results given the dominance of those two sides relative to the rest of the league.

So, firstly let’s compare him to his direct rival in blue, John Souttar.

Scales vs Souttar

Whilst Rangers have much better team defensive statistics this season in the league, Scales is impressive relative to his older rival.

The Ibrox player has a higher proportion of aerial duel wins and is less prone to be dribbled past but otherwise the Irish international scores much higher.

In ball progression especially Scales is recognised using Statsbomb's proprietary on ball value mechanism. He even scores higher in defensive action OBV – 0.04 to 0.

All the above probably renders the more extreme criticism of Scales unfair, but I wanted to ask the question “is he improving”?

Defensive Actions

The following plots Scales’s defensive action success rate as a five-match rolling average in all competitions.

It is pleasing that the orange trend line is on the upward curve. Also gratifying is that the range of values is narrow hinting at a certain level of consistency.

Indeed, his lowest five-match average defensive action success rate was 69 per cent in his first five appearances. His highest trended score is 86 per cent during January and February 2024.

That suggests an improvement were it not for the obvious dip in the average over the last month culminating in a very difficult performance at home to Livingston in the cup.

Putting recency bias to one side, then, we can evidence an improvement in Scales’s defensive action success over the season.

Packing

The packing score similarly trended over a five-match rolling average providing insight into many other core centre-back competencies.

Packing includes forward passes (mostly given but some received); dribbles and carries that take opponents out of the game; recoveries where opponents are taken out of the game; and turnovers where teammates are then wrong side of the ball relative to your own goal.

The highest volume of activity here is the passing; that is forward passes that take opponents out of the game to be specific. That accounts for 83 per cent of Scales’s packing activity.

And it is in the passing forwards department where there has been a recent dip. The last three matches have seen an average packing score of only 49 versus 69 for all matches before that.

Whereas Scales average 14.08 defensive actions per match he attempts 93.69 passes. With Celtic, being able to move the ball forward accurately and with tempo from the back is important in unsettling often deeply entrenched defences.

A mixed picture then, with defensive action success generally on the up and ball progression regressing, coloured within the context of a clear dip in form over the most recent matches.

Historical Context

Finally, I want to put the view forwards I use for centre-backs that focus purely on defensive actions (not passing) and has, I believe, stood up well to any ”eye test” you wish to compare.

Scales profiles almost exactly like Jason Denayer, the Belgian internationalist who is mainly fondly remembered for a productive partnership with Virgil Van Dijk for one season.

He is slightly on the wrong side of the “Average” centre-back profile when compared to those from 2014-15 onwards.

But not the worst!

I think there is a lot of predetermined bias with Scales and his style of play, and his rather ponderous manner of getting the ball forward. Much of this stems from what he is not. Instead of £70 million in the bank Celtic supporters hoped for a Cameron Carter-Vickers level of partner for the American. Instead, we have last season's sixth, seventh or even eighth choice centre-back who had one foot on the bus to Aberdeen last summer.

In that sense, he is a lightning rod for all that is wrong with Celtic’s recruitment strategies and execution.

Which is very unfair on Scales.

He is a pretty solid performer, not great but not the worst. He has been ever-present and reliable which is double-edged as he has been a constant reminder this season of what was not achieved in the transfer windows.

It is a credit to him that from a humble squad status, he has proven to be…..ok.

So, let’s not burden Scales with our disappointment at club performance, and hope he recovers from his recent form dip to be steady and consistent for the run-in.