The writing was on the wall for Chris Jullien before this weekend.
It was on the wall when Celtic turned down a major bid from France for Stephen Welsh.
The manager likes him. The coaches like him. He remains our best defender in the air, and our most potent threat from set pieces launched into the box. And he can cover a lot of ground as well.
Welsh is a good player, and we’ve always know it, since he was the one bright spot in the Lennon disaster and meltdown season of two years ago. Welsh showed his early reserves of mental strength to come out of that as our one positive … last season he was overlooked a lot, but not by anyone at the club itself. In fact, across all competitions last season he featured 22 times including ten games in the league. Not bad for a bit-part player.
Few see him having much impact this season once there are three fit centre backs in front of him … but therein lies the key. There are four centre backs who, in theory, should be ahead of him in the pecking order … but one of them is clearly not going to be.
Chris Jullien is done. That performance, more than anything else, is the nail in the coffin.
The big Frenchman is now fifth out of five centre backs at Celtic and even if he hadn’t mouthed off about the manager before this season started, that would have been Game Over.
Taking into account those extraordinarily foolish remarks, and based on Welsh’s performance at the weekend, against one of the better teams in the league, there’s probably no way back now, even if a club doesn’t come in for him in the next few weeks.
And one will, by the way, because Jullien himself is too good to sit on the bench.
He would walk into any other defence in this league, and that’s a fact.
Not even on the bus on Sunday. Says it all.
God bless big yogi YNWA HAIL! HAIL!
Feed the Bear….Big Yogi…..RIP
As much as I can understand your point I don´t agree with it 100%.
Welsh is needed more than Julien for 2 reasons … He helps the UEFA criteria and he can play on the left hand side (although not ideally as shown in the match he played with young Murray last season where he switched to the right hand side)
Julien can do neither .. (at least he has always played on the right during his time here .. with Ajer and Welsh accommodating him by playing on the left)
And with the club shelling out on making CCV´s loan permanent that for me was the final nail in any chance Julien had .. as both he and CCV prefer the right hand side and unless we are thinking about a 3 central def formation then he is out of the picture.
If we are thinking about 2 players for every position then for me it would likely be CCV and Welsh on the right .. with Starfelt and Jenz on the left. (Although all with the exception of CCV can switch to the left hand side)
I agree that Julien is too good not to be playing football and that he would get a start elsewhere. Whatever was said between him and Ange last year, and I don’t know exactly what the content of it was, has become an expensive £7 million question that ultimately has a negative impact not only on the player but also Celtic and its finances.
Given the leeway afforded to Griff including at the start of last season, then the fallout with Julien must have been really significant or at least strangely I hope so. Elsewise we’re just throwing good money down the drain for the sake of Ange’s stance. Whether we have better players here now has yet to be proven but we have to move on from this. I hope Julien does move on this summer for everyone’s sake as career-wise he can’t afford to remain here and simply be the squad example of what happens when you cross Ange.