Morgan Wellsbury is a 19-year-old striker who plays for Tauranga City in the New Zealand Northern League. Wellsbury is playing his second season for Tauranga after leaving the Wellington Phoenix academy. He has had an explosion in offensive production to start the season with 5 goals in 7 games, helping Tauranga to unexpectedly take the top spot in the Northern League table.
Wellsbury is a tall striker, around 6’1″ (1.85 m). He is broad-shouldered but still has some filling out to do. Wellsbury is good at using his size to hold the ball up. He wins a lot of fouls by getting his body in between opponents and the ball. However, I think if he fills out a bit more, he could get to a point where he is able to tank getting kicked or shoved and push past defenders. Wellsbury ends up getting a lot of key passes simply by winning flicks on in the box or holding the ball up and playing short layoffs to teammates. He also has some decent vision and can pick out wingers in space in transition. That said, his first touch and control are quite mediocre so his ability to play these passes is reliant on him having quite a bit of time and space. Along the same lines, Wellsbury is not a player who is going to provide a lot of value with his dribbling. In fact, he does not touch the ball that much in general. He is mostly focused on trying to win physical battles off of long balls and getting shots in the box. Wellsbury’s off-the-ball movement is generally quite strong. Most of his shots are high-danger danger as a result of getting on the end of crosses, through balls, and cutbacks. However, the volume of these shots is not very high, he only gets a couple per game. At the semi-pro level, you would hope to see greater shot volume to confidently predict a successful transition to the professional game. I see two main reasons for Wellsbury’s low shot volume. Firstly, Tauranga is a very defensive bunker and counter-attack team. So there just are not as many possessions that can end in a shot for Wellsbury as there would be on a more possession-dominant team. But the other factor is that Wellsbury is kind of slow. This makes him less of a threat in behind and also means that he cannot shake markers in the box as easily as a faster player could.
Wellsbury does not press very often at all. This is partly a tactical thing as Tauranga does not press opponents at all. Wellsbury will cut off passing lanes but he is not going to be sprinting to close opposition defenders down. He does, however, track back into midfield and make defensive interventions there from time to time. The fact he was able to do that effectively does suggest he could be useful in a higher-pressing team.
Wellsbury is a very raw player who nevertheless has potential thanks to his strength and decent technical skills. The NZNL is, on paper, a fully amateur league and therefore there would not be any transfer fee associated with signing Wellsbury. So I think he would be worth a gamble for teams at a low professional level, or for bigger clubs to stash in their reserve teams and hope he pans out. An MLS Next Pro deal, or equivalent European reserve league would make a lot of sense for him.
Target Scouting 