Celtic’s interest in Manchester City central defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis makes perfect sense | OneFootball

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The Celtic Star

·27 May 2022

Celtic’s interest in Manchester City central defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis makes perfect sense

Article image:Celtic’s interest in Manchester City central defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis makes perfect sense

At only 20 years of age reported Celtic Centre-half target Taylor Harwood-Bellis has a good level of experience already under his belt.

Although yet to play a competitive match for Manchester City, Harwood-Bellis has already played for two Championship clubs, in Blackburn Rovers (19 appearances), and more recently with Stoke City (24 appearances), and has also picked up experience playing for Anderlecht (19 appearances) under Vincent Kompany in the Jupiler Pro-league. And let’s be honest there isn’t much about defending that Vincent Kompany didn’t experience in his career, so it was certainly a wise decision on the part of City to place the player under the watchful eye of the former City captain.


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At Anderlecht Harwood-Bellis also played in Champions League qualifiers, and is also clearly highly regarded at international level, having represented England from Under 15’s all the way to Under -21 level, where he has also captained his country. And at Under 23 level with City the player has played a further 40 matches.

The youngster who is just over 6ft 1, is a right footed centre half, who has played as both a left-side and right sided central defender so far in his burgeoning career – with his career heat-map showing a player who spends most of his time as a left sided central defender, even if that is not on his natural foot.

His key strengths appear to be strong positional play, a good reading of the game and a defender who scores high on both concentration and timely interceptions. And although a player who likes to engage with opposition strikers, it appears tackling directly is not a strong suit – with the Harwood-Bellis preferring to sit off slightly, intercept or look to win second balls rather than rush into direct engagement with his opponent – he averages 1.0 tackles a game, but that rises to 1.9 for interceptions.

One thing that does stand out with Taylor Harwood-Bellis is that he is very much a footballing central defender, one who likes to pass from the back and can do so accurately, alongside being a player who is not fazed when having to carry the ball from his defensive positions and look to break the lines – he has a 70% passing accuracy in the opponent’s half, excellent figures for a central defender, alongside an 87% success rate in his own half. His clearance rate is also impressive at almost 4.0 per game, showing he can defend his own box as well as play a bit.

And if there were a couple of things missing from Celtic’s defensive stats last season, passing the ball beyond more than a few yards stood out, as did a willingness and comfort in carrying the ball into the opponent’s half. On both those sides of the game Harwood-Bellis would perhaps add extra layers and further options to Celtic’s attacks beginning from the defence. As such he could well complement what we have but also add something we’ve been missing to the mix.

Whether Celtic are interested in Taylor Harwood-Bellis remains to be seen, after all it’s hard to see Celtic utilising the loan market without the deal including an option to buy, and so far, City haven’t included such options in his three previous loan moves.

It may also be with Mark Lawwell having joined up at Celtic and having come from City, that the link comes solely from that connection, much like the rehashing of Ko Itakura’s links to Celtic after a loan spell with Schalke.

Yet much like his Manchester City colleague Harwood-Bellis offers a skillset missing from Celtic’s defensive toolkit at present, and despite being only 20 years of age, the youngster has a good level of experience already gained at three clubs across two different leagues, as such we already know the player is capable of performing at a decent level of competition.

I’d be far from keen for Celtic to take on Harwood-Bellis without an option to buy being included, as it simply blocks a pathway plan for our own youngsters and we’d be progressing a talent for another club, whilst at the same time stunting our own long-term squad development by simply having to look at alternative options next summer.

Article image:Celtic’s interest in Manchester City central defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis makes perfect sense

Captain Taylor Harwood-Bellis of England makes a point during the UEFA European Under-21 Championship Qualifier match between England U21 and Andorra U21 on March 25, 2022 in Bournemouth, (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

But if that option to buy could be agreed, much like Cameron Carter-Vickers and Jota this season, the try before you buy approach may well pay-off, because Taylor Harwood-Bellis looks like a defender who has some of the attributes we’ve been lacking from our current defensive options and looks like a player who could have a big future ahead of him.

And finally, Here’s what former boss Tony Mowbray had to say about Harwood-Bellis during his loan spell with Blackburn Rovers.

“Taylor has a defensive instinct, a warrior attitude, and he’s someone who wants to win headers and tackles. He wants to engage; he’s composed on the ball and has a lot of really good attributes.”

Niall J

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