How Swansea City are seriously laughing at Celtic right now | OneFootball

Former Celtic duo Stephen Welsh and Adam Idah are currently thriving for Swansea City in the Championship.

Swansea City have started the Championship season exceptionally well and two players that are standing out for them at the moment are former Celtic pair Stephen Welsh and Adam Idah.

Swansea eased to a comfortable 3-1 defeat of Burnley at the weekend with goals scored by Adam Idah, Moussa Yeo and Zan Vipotnik as they continued their strong start to the campaign.

The Jacks have now collected 14 points from their opening seven matches and sit level on points at the top-of-the-table with West Ham United, Middlesbrough and West Bromwich Albion.

Swansea were much-improved after the appointment of Vitor Matos last season and they would have expected to have pushed for at least the top eight and the play-off places this time around.

However, it appears as though a push for the play-offs may well simply just be the minimum and that a push for the top two is on the cards after their early burst; and both Welsh and Idah continuing to sustain their form will be key to that – and rub salt into the wounds of former club Celtic.

Stephen Welsh is ideal for Vitor Matos at Swansea

Swansea’s first signing of the summer was that of centre-back Stephen Welsh, who arrived on a permanent deal from Celtic after a successful time of it at Motherwell last season.

At the heart of the Motherwell defence, he was key to The Well qualifying for the UEFA Europa Conference League with an impressive style of football that earned manager Jens Berthel Askou a move to French side Toulouse in Ligue 1 over the summer – a club previously linked with Welsh back in 2022.

The reason for that approach being rebuffed was because Ange Postecoglou, Celtic boss at the time, saw him as part of the first-team plans at Celtic Park – with his ability to play out from the back ideal for a Postecoglou-coached side.

Welsh has shown those abilities once again in South Wales, and his ability to step forward with the ball and also play incisive passes into midfield is imperative for how Vitor Matos wants his side to play.

With an average of 63 accurate passes per game, Welsh tops the list for that statistic in the Swansea squad – and that is a Swansea side that is currently third on the list for average possession per match, highlighting the importance of Welsh with the ball at his feet.

Defensively, Welsh has also contributed with the second most clearances for Swansea this season thus far, perhaps again showing his ability to read the game in both phases of play.

In the meantime, Celtic have kept five clean sheets in ten matches across all competitions which, for a team that dominates domestically, isn’t the most impressive record.

Their lack of composure in possession, something that Welsh has in abundance, has also been exploited on a couple of occasions already this year with their humiliation at the hands of LASK in the UEFA Champions League as well as a 3-0 loss to arch-rivals Rangers in the quarter-finals of the Scottish League Cup.

Adam Idah is showing his potential at Swansea

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Over the summer, Celtic broke their club-record transfer fee to bring in Kasper Hogh; one of the heroes of Bodo/Glimt’s run to the round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League last season.

There have been warnings about players leaving Kjetil Knutsen’s side in the Arctic Circle and struggling to thrive outside of the Bodo environment, such as Jens Petter Hauge, Patrick Berg – both of whom returned to the club, as well as Faris Moumbagna and Matthias Normann among many others.

Not taking heed of those warnings may well be costing Celtic big time this season with Hogh struggling early on this season, scoring in just one of his seven appearances thus far.

A former big money signing for The Bhoys is Adam Idah and the form of Hogh in comparison to Idah is only set to worsen the regret they may already be feeling.

Idah’s goal against Burnley the other day complimented what was an excellent all-round display from the Irishman, who is beginning to really show signs of development, which is not linear for all players, at the age of 25.

Celtic had him scoring 29 goals in 72 games at a younger age just as he seemed as though he would kick on but opted to cash in on him with a sale to Swansea last year – and it may be one of a couple of deals that they are now regretting.

Recreating the so-called ‘Swansalona’ style under Vitor Matos

Back in the late-2000s and the early-2010s, Swansea played some excellent football as they rose from League Two to the Premier League between 2004 and 2011.

The term ‘Swansalona’ was given to them during their debut campaign in the Premier League under the management of Brendan Rodgers but Rodgers had simply developed a style of football that had already been born with the likes of Roberto Martinez and Paulo Sousa; and continued with Michael Laudrup and even Garry Monk.

The last decade has seen Swansea continue to play a relatively attractive and predominantly possession-based style with progressive managers in situ but the effectiveness has been hampered by a confused approach where they would jump from one style to the next; from Graham Potter to Steve Cooper and then from Russell Martin to Michael Duff.

Now, though, Vitor Matos is beginning to implement his passing with a purpose style and Swansea are again one of the more attractive teams to watch but with more control than recent years – as displayed by the fact that they have conceded the joint fewest goals in the division and kept the joint most amount of clean sheets.

Swansea look as though they may have punished a confused and ill-thought out period of business by Celtic to land to well-suited gems for their style in Welsh and Idah.