Motherwell's Elliot Watt the 'best' midfielder in Scotland?

As regular readers will know, I’m not one to get too carried away when it comes to Motherwell. Ok, I absolutely am.

So, when I decided to make Elliot Watt the focus of this week’s newsletter, imagine my struggle to contain myself when I popped his name into The Herald supercomputer (the office sub to Hudl Statsboard) and these were among the names spewed out as being comparable to the Fir Park midfielder.

Frenkie De Jong. Manuel Locatelli. Matteo Guendouzi. Among many other stars of Europe’s top leagues. Frankly, with the form Watt is in currently, I don’t think any of them could lace his boots…

To momentarily behave like an objective journalist, any fanboying of Watt for his performances so far this season is hardly exclusive to those with claret and amber leanings.

(Image: Russell Cheyne / Shutterstock)

When working at the game at Celtic Park on Sunday, my colleagues in the press box were cooing over Jens Berthel Askou’s team in general, but in particular about the composure and control that Watt was asserting over what is supposed to be the best midfield in the country.

I am a huge fan of Callum McGregor, but at times, it was Watt - with the help of the similarly excellent Lukas Fadinger, it should be said - who was setting the tone, and the pair gave their team a platform to build the game and enjoy spells of some of the most controlled possession I’ve seen from a Motherwell side at Celtic Park.

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Nobody who has watched Motherwell in general this season, or Watt more closely, would have been surprised. Although, I do have a St Johnstone supporting pal who will have been taken aback at just how big an impact the 25-year-old has made since making the move from McDiarmid Park in the summer.

In fairness, he wasn’t the only one who was a little underwhelmed by the signing. From a Motherwell perspective, picking up a midfielder who had struggled to nail down a place in the team who were relegated from the Premiership hardly set the pulses racing.

In search of a reason to be optimistic, I sent a message to my friend from the Fair City to get his verdict on the new arrival. The response was lukewarm at best, saying that he was decent, good on the ball, but sometimes tried too much, and was therefore prone to giving it away.

Furthermore, it was theorised that he may cost the team a few goals a season by dallying on it, and given how Berthel Askou was shaping up to play, that set alarm bells ringing. Oh, and he wasn’t the quickest either.

Well, Watt has blown away every single one of the reservations I may have had before I saw him pulling on a Motherwell jersey, and then some. Whether it is the fact he suits the system, or he is responding to the responsibility placed upon him by his manager to be the one to take the ball from the defence, he is absolutely thriving.

Watt was deservedly named the player of the month for September after a vote by the fans, and I think that speaks volumes for the level of his performances. Normally, a deep-lying midfielder may struggle to catch the eye as much as an attacking player would, but there seems to be a real appreciation from the Fir Park crowd over the role that Watt is carrying out, and how well he is doing it.

And the stats back up the eye test. Oh yes, I don’t just use the work’s Hudl account to make daft comparisons between players, you know. Sometimes I use it for useful stuff too, like informing people that he is way out on his own at the top of the charts in the Premiership for fancy terms like deep progressions (when a player passes or carries the ball into the opponent’s final third) and line breaking passes.

(Image: Pete Summers / Shutterstock)

What this all boils down to is that Watt is, as the kids might say, a serious baller. His value not only in dictating the tempo but in getting Motherwell up the pitch cannot be underestimated. In fact, taking into account his stats, there is an argument for saying that Watt is in fact the best-performing midfielder in the country at present.

Hopefully he can maintain those levels. What a player.

AND ANOTHER THING…

It’s amazing what a Saturday sit-down with The Herald can do for a player, eh? Fresh from his clearly confidence-boosting big interview with yours truly last week, Apostolos Stamatelopoulos pops up with a double at Celtic Park.

As much as I’d love to claim the credit, it is the striker who deserves the plaudits for not only the execution of his first goal in particular, but for the strength of will and resolve he has shown in shaking off his difficult start to the season and getting back amongst the goals.

As he told me last week, he has hardly had his troubles to seek since moving to the other side of the world from his native Australia, with his initial separation from his wife and newborn son then compounded by a run of freak injuries, but he now sounds really happy with life in Scotland and just as importantly, is healthy too.

It’s a shame the international break has arrived to disrupt the momentum he was building, but there is a run of games coming up where he will fancy his chances of adding to his tally.