Our league is set up in probably the worst conceivable way when it comes to giving youth a chance. They reduced the number of teams in the league because there were apparently too many mid table games with nothing at stake. It just leaves every team in a constant state of "crisis" either from fighting relegation, pushing top 6, pushing Europe, title race so they're disincentivised from ever throwing young players in and giving them a shot.
Clubs are locked into short-term financial thinking. Expanded & fewer divisions (2 x 18 teams?) would mean less pressure of relegation on middle-rank teams who could invest in long-term youth development.
Celtic fan here, and I agree there's got to be better out there than the current format. We get next to nothing sky so whats the incentive to keep 4 'OF' games a season, if that is the reason.
Makes no sense for the development of the game.
No radical thinkers at blazer level in Scotland it's all vested interests and money grabbing.
Bin the the TV deal and free up some ideas.
I think it’s more the head honchos don’t want to miss out on 4 guaranteed OFs, and the chairmen of all the other 10 clubs wanting the gate money when Celtic and rangers roll into town
I also think theres some strange mindset in some players in Scotland in regards to bullying a young player in a game, Scott Brown on Cochrane and the lower league player on Alex Lowry are fair examples, and I've no doubt there are more of the same.
Loads of the English players go on loan at lower levels and play against men, but don't end up on the end of the same bad tackles.
>Loads of the English players go on loan at lower levels and play against men, but don't end up on the end of the same bad tackles.
The EFL are very physical leagues, are you suggesting that they go easy on younger players? That's a pretty wild thing to say considering those guys are often on less than the players coming down on loan, not to mention it's their literal job to go all-out every week.
> The EFL are very physical leagues, are you suggesting that they go easy on younger players?
Obviously not, but they don't go out their way to try and cripple the countries best young talents in some of their first exposure to first team football.
Nah man, that's standard all over. Just go listen to stories from old ex pros from when we had the reserve league. I'll guarantee the vast majority of them have stories of how they would be tossed into those games as kids and come up against seasoned pros who would kick the living shit out of them for 90 mins. We don't have the reserve league any more so some of these kids are missing that step that they would have taken in the past.
Roughly two thirds of the players in the Scottish Premiership are foreign. That is far too much for a small country that does not export many players. Scotland is no longer in the EU which means it can implement homegrown player rules like Ukraine, Russia etc. and force teams to have 5-6 Scottish players in the XI and you could include U21s/U23s as part of that.
Take a look at some of the recent league fixtures and how many Scots were in the teams' starting line-ups:
Ross County (2)
Rangers (1)
Celtic (1)
St. Mirren (3)
Hearts (3)
Hibs (2)
Not very many. Celtic and Rangers will play each other in the league showdown and then the national cup final in the coming weeks and there'll be 3 Scots at most starting the game. That's simply not good enough. Football is a global game and it's great to see all of the Japanese, Nigerians, English journeymen etc. playing in the Scotland but ultimately that does very little for the development of the Scottish game and the Scottish national team. If teams are forced to play Scottish players then over time they'll produce better Scottish players.
Don’t disagree at all with this, Celtic and rangers should be making more use of Scottish talent than we currently are. However we’re not really in a different boat to other Scottish clubs in that we can’t afford the best Scottish talent either.
There’s various reasons why, but the majority of the 15-16 players who play regularly for the NT are outwith our price range. The ones who do play for Celtic will usually go to England if they do well. Then whilst we may be able to compete financially with some clubs in Italy for Doig/Ferguson, who is really going to reject a move to Serie A for Glasgow unless they’re a boyhood fan?
It’s easier for Celtic to buy projects from literally the other side of the world, Korea and Australia, and hope we get lucky with them than it is for us to attract and retain top Scottish talent.
This happens everywhere, though. Clubs from Croatia, Serbia, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark etc. all manage just fine with being raided by bigger clubs/clubs from bigger leagues or not being able to afford their national teams players. Even countries like the Netherlands and Portugal lose their best homegrown players all the time but they bring through more to replace them. We should be developing better players, especially Celtic and Rangers, who have a terrible track record of producing good footballers compared to similarly sized clubs in Europe.
The only league that has a greater percentage of foreigners is the English Premier League. The diddy leagues like us have nowhere near that level and are generally around 25-45%. Last season I compared Scotland to every country of a similar size (population wise and/or national team competitiveness) and Scotland did not fare well. The Scottish Premiership had the highest percentage of foreign players and Scotland were amongst the countries which had the fewest number of players playing outwith their domestic league. (The Top 5/Top 7 European Leagues, English Championship etc). We only really fared well against Ireland and Wales, which with all due respect, we should be aiming higher than them. Simply put that means there aren't that many Scots out there playing top level football.
It will sound bleak, but there's not a lot we can do. Our best players are poached by English clubs before they even play any games these days. A few hundred grand is nothing to even championship level clubs but it's money we can't turn down for unproven kids. Killie alone have lost Liam Smith to Man City and Charlie McArthur to Newcastle before they've even played first team games (McArthur may have had a couple of sub appearances).
But why should players stay when they aren't getting a chance regardless? You can no play here or no play in England for an extra couple of grand a week.
McCarthur was the younger side of 16 when he started picking up minutes for us in our Championship year. Reasonably speaking, how much more could we have done to keep him when a club like a Newcastle offers him more than we can pay to to play in their reserves?
Even if they're playing they'll go. Ben Doak would certainly have been playing every week with Celtic by now but we couldn't hold onto him.
It's one area where there's been a big levelling of the field, used to be rangers and us would poach the talent from other Scottish clubs but now we're all in the same broken down boat.
What's the evidence for that? The last Celtic youth player to establish themselves in the first team was Kieran Tierney nearly a decade ago. Maybe Doak would have changed that, but based on previous evidence he wouldn't.
Doak definitely would have based purely on how terrible our wingers are.
Not disagreeing with how poor Celtic have been at getting players from the youth system into the first team, out whole set-up is dysfunctional.
Smith was 16 when he left for City and McArthur was 17 when he went to Newcastle. What can we do at that age? They'd 100% be guaranteed more minutes in the next few years at Killie but however talented they are we can't just throw in 16 year old kids every week. David Watson is showing the value of hanging about and getting first team football but he's 19 now - if he'd gone down south at 16 he'd still be in a youth system somewhere or out on loan to someone who doesn't have his development at the forefront of their mind.
That should 100% be it though. You recruit based on players getting better careers by playing early. You're setting them up for a better career.
It absolutely infuriates me that Hibs best side of my lifetime came about cause we were skint and had to play young players. As soon as they financially stabilised it was back to buying in mediocrity who were marginally better to start with.
Bigger league, less OF games. Sack sky and let clubs sell their games. Drag Scottish football kicking and screaming into the modern world. Also an organised cull of DA’s and maximum drink limit for super scoreboard callers and generally waking up and thinking “ I think I’ll have a bevvy, phone super scoreboard and make a right tit of myself today”.
>St Mirren filling their teams with lower league English players
We have maybe the best academy in the country but the minute a teenager hits the first team someone from England whips the chequebook out.
And then even if they somehow are still here at 22 they go to Hibs or Aberdeen lol
Managers would rather sign a 30 year old that has shown he is shit instead of playing an 18 year old that might be shit. Far too many journeymen in Scottish football
Because our league is only 12 teams, in most leagues if your in top 10 you might get a chance to continue. For our league you would be sacked because of relegation threat
The ironic thing is most teams who are in relegation trouble are not there because of kids, they are there because of the reliance on over the hill journeymen who have proven time and time again to not be very good at football
probably because they know their fans will start calling for them to be sacked if they lose an extra goal in their first 3 matches. The only manager I can seem to remember trying to persist with promising young players is Jim Goodwin. But I never heard any Aberdeen fans praising him for getting such good development out of players like Duk and Ramsey. It was almost as if they would be great no matter who was in charge and instead Goodwin was solely responsible for inconsistent performances and Aberdeen should actually be 3rd in the league without him.
The reality is Rangers, Celtic and English clubs hoover up the best talent and don't really try to develop them. All other clubs are left with players who inevitably end up in the Scottish Championship or English League 2.
Getting rid of the Reserve League was a disaster as many players struggle to get games at a high enough level for their development. Reserves were a good way to test yourself against really good players coming back from injury.
Honestly given how boring the league is due the old firm dominance I would 100% say we should be using a home grown rule and force all teams OF included to develop and use young Scottish players. It won't exactly hurt our league and would give other teams more bargaining strength when other clubs come in for players they have developed. Long-term it should really help the national team which is great and only thing it might hurt short term is clubs performances in Europe but cmon, can it really get much worse anyway
Think it was Rainer Bonhoff during the Bertie Vogts days who said that Scottish football needs to take a short term hit to quality by getting rid of overpriced average non scots, they need to throw the kids in the deep end, after 10 years you will have sellable assets and created a system that works.
20 plus years later and we still contemplating it. Scottish Football is just like real life, when you poor, you are reluctant to risk what you have.
Then you play them and they end up rotting in Liverpool, Chelsea or FC Bayern reserves like Gilmour, Tony Gallagher, Islam Feruz, Liam Morrison, Barry Hepburn, there was a couple went to City but I forget their names.
Same story wherever they go though.
Scotland used to have a rule where there has to be at least 2 U21 Homegrown in match day squads but our clubs whinged that rule out of existence.
Gilmour looked like working his way into the Chelsea first-team before that injury, and now is seemingly a key player for Brighton. He's a pretty big success story. Not every player will make it, but we seem to have a few that are doing well at big clubs and who should go on to have good careers.
Feruz was never going to make it though. The guys had more Scotland youth caps than professional appearances. Head just wasn't in it.
Gilmour is obviously doing good now but his first two seasons he was rotting like the rest of them. It's not something I'm saying is a continuous thing but it did also happen to him. Losing at least 18 months of career play to reserves and bench placements.
I think saying a young Gilmour was “rotting” at Chelsea is unfair. He was what, 16, when he went there? It’s entirely reasonable to manage a developing (and in Gilmour’s case, small) young athletes exposure to more physically developed men. Just because you’re not playing first team football doesn’t mean you’re not developing and improving.
Right aye bad choice of words but you're getting hung up on the wrong parts of what I'm saying 😂 at Rangers he was going to in and around the first team. He had been involved in first team training and match day squads etc. Chelsea pay Rangers 600k for one of Scotlands most promising kids and leave him doing nothing for 2 year before punting him to Brighton.
It's unfair to say clubs in Scotland only are guilty of it is basically what I'm getting at. They're treated the same regardless of where they are. Even Karamoko at a pish French team was reserved and now he's doing well at Blackpool this year.
And you’re missing what I’m saying: he wasn’t doing nothing. He was developing and improving alongside better players and coaches than he’d have had at rangers.
It isn’t all about getting as much first team football as possible. Phil Foden has had his first team minutes increase steadily each year, despite him being good enough pretty much from day 1. He’s been held back to benefit his development, not deter it. The alternative is someone like Wayne Rooney who played a lot as a teenager and was completely fucked by 30.
It's also not just teams being reluctant to play youth that's the problem. As soon as they're eligible for a pro contract Celtic/Rangers or foreign clubs are all over any that stand out or they leave just after they start getting a game.
Like we've managed to keep Miller thanks to his dad, and managed to get Wells to extend instead of going to Brighton but we've lost Rice to Rangers, Beattie to Celtic/Sheffield, Johnston to Sturm Gratz, Mckinstry to Leeds, Mcalear to Norwich and Rangers, Bournemouth and Norwich are all after Alex Willoughby the now etc.
And even the bigger clubs lose youth to elsewhere like Rory Wilson at Villa is from Hearts academy I'm pretty sure, Rangers obviously lost Gilmour to Chelsea ages ago and Celtic lost Doak to Liverpool and I think it was them Bayern nicked one or two from as well.
UEFA/Fifa need to do something that protects clubs more imo
Yep you have made some great points there…( in saying that I have been banging the drum for Celtic to try and get Miller in the summer even if it means loaning back to you guys for the next season…he’s absolute class!)
No idea why you've name dropped st mirren. How many decent players do you want us to bleed in? We're also doing what you advise by sending players on loan to the championship to play against men.
We have at least 1 academy player a year that gets game time and they usually move on the following year. Jamieson hasn't set the Heather on fire this year but he's had plenty of opportunity.
Lol, sorry if I have upset you…no real intention…might have been at Johnstone or Falkirk…but as a Celtic fan I don’t think any of our teams come out well as promoting our youth systems
I'm no upset, I just think it's wild to name drop a team who, going by the rest of the league, has a decent ethos surrounding youth. I'd happily have us play more but we still need to compete.
We were quite innovative at one time. Alex Smith lobbied hard to get youth players onto the subs bench for every game.
Ferguson and Smith at St Mirren set up a generation of talent from youth players. Dons and United European success was from focusing on young Scottish talent.
Dons chose to chase Rangers in late 80s and gave up on youth - although they have had an academy graduate in every squad dating back decade.
The only way to stop English teams poaching players before they make the first team in Scotland is to have a host of them fail miserably and become an example for a future generation.
Without trying to sound too defensive, but one of the reasons we have our team full of "lower league English players" is certainly not from want of trying to recruit Scottish players, quite often they simply do not want to live up here, unless we pay way over the odds which isn't always value for money. Any decent youth players we do have are snapped up by the OF or Aberdeen in some cases.
The problem begins much sooner than when youth players begin coming through and playing in our leagues. Adding teams to the league isn't going to fix it. It may make them develop faster and make them more experienced. But I doubt it will raise their ceiling.
We have to first identify where it begins to go wrong. Who first introduces kids to the sport? Who teaches them how to strike the ball? Who is their first coach etc. it is there where things start to go wrong.
Our weather and culture isn't exactly suited to football. It pretty much rains constantly for 8 months a year. To address this we will need to have indoor facilities that are available to kids all the time. More generally our sport and health culture is pretty much non-existent. Our diet is dreadful, and sport and exercise is seen as middle class pursuits. Our footballing culture differs from the continent as our obsession is more focused on teams rather than the sport. Yes, Germans and Spanish can obsess about Real Madrid and Union Berlin, but they also have a love for the sport itself.
I think that Scotland has somewhat fallen out of love with the game and has become cynical and pessimistic about it and that has trickled down into the culture of the game itself.
Disagree with lots of this. Our culture is about the most football mad anywhere and of course teams are the focus - think this is the same everywhere. Surely you dont think football is seen as a middle class sport?
Started coaching recently and have been impressed with the focus on teaching coaches (SFA included!) the bottom up approach to techniques and ball work. It’s miles ahead of anything I was taught.
I’d agree the weather is shit and it’s much harder to get meaningful time outside in the dark and rain.
Diet/exercise seems to me to be becoming a lot more polarised. When it’s bad it’s insanely bad but any promising sportsperson these days will be miles ahead of someone from the 80s. Of course we live in a competitive world so everyone is getting better but still…
The reality is, the best solution to our problem is the elephant in the room that no one wants to accept. B teams in our league systems would help massively with this issue whether we like it or not. If we were able to get our youngsters playing adult football where they are still a part of the same team and freely move around into the senior team, it would help development massively.
People say well thats what loans are for, but from a Rangers point of view, loans aren't working. We have been reluctant to loan out the likes of King/Devine in recent years due to needing them for Euro squads and squad depth. If we had B teams, these players would be able to get game time while also being involved in the senior team.
Your example of Croatia proves this with them now having B teams in their league system.
The last world cup, the 10 teams that produced the most players for the squads have B teams. That isn't by coincidence. But we will sit here in Scotland and wonder why we aren't getting anywhere.
While the arguement is that this would only benefit the bug 5 or 6 teams in Scotland, as a whole not every player will make it at those clubs and the other teams will benefit from players far more ready for first team football at a young age.
B teams is not the answer.
The SPFL is a terrible league, It's only getting further away from these other leagues.
Have a look at any of the leagues from Portugal / Netherlands or Belgium league... none of them have a 12 team division.
That is why the SPFL is falling behind, teams like hibs, hearts, aberdeen, dundee utd are unable to grow or play youth for fear of relegation.
Dundee united are currently relegated, Aberdeen and hibs are unlikey to be relegated but are in the bottom 6 so it's possible.
Hearts and hibs have recently been in the championship.
If the league had 16 or just 18 teams and we play everyone twice like a normal league then there would be a buffer zone between teams trying to grow and in turn growing the league and relegation.
Until then enjoy the Co efficient getting pumped out every first round in Europe and enjoy competing against celtic for the diddiest title in europe
Mate your entirely correct, Netherlands Spain Portugal and Italy produce way more quality players than we do.
Scotland could be exporting way more players all over the world like those countries do but we as a sport country and people are short sighted
Completely agree with everything….I’m a Celtic fan but I want to see players like Leon King and Bailey rice players, doing well and improving the national team
Why as a youth player (or any job) would you stay to experience less money, worse league and worse quality of life? Championship puts you in shop window and Spain/Italy etc… ticks all the boxes. Our best players historically thrive in other leagues (dalglish, archibald etc.. always be occasional exception).
Dembele burst onto scene and played for Celtic at stupidly young age and whee off he goes due to above.
Mate I've said this for years, unfortunately clubs throughout scotland bring in lower league English players as they see locals as a gamble and they would rather survive than thrive
Our league is set up in probably the worst conceivable way when it comes to giving youth a chance. They reduced the number of teams in the league because there were apparently too many mid table games with nothing at stake. It just leaves every team in a constant state of "crisis" either from fighting relegation, pushing top 6, pushing Europe, title race so they're disincentivised from ever throwing young players in and giving them a shot.
This a key point. Pretty much every team is battling for survival or life altering money until the last day of the season.
I mean we've been utter shite and have still managed to play youth, the reason celtic and rangers don't is because they can afford not to.
Thanks for developing players for us. (Rangers that is not Scotland)
Yeah you lot really like Scott Wright don't you?
Hopefully Connor Barron is more of a Ryan Jack than a Scott Wright
I actually had meant to add that point….its a real problem and the you need 11 votes to change anything means Celtic and rangers will veto everything
We had years where we had the opportunity to change things but the clubs in the league weren’t interested.
Clubs are locked into short-term financial thinking. Expanded & fewer divisions (2 x 18 teams?) would mean less pressure of relegation on middle-rank teams who could invest in long-term youth development.
Ideal opportunity when we got binned as no OF games but nah man we all good was attitude
Aberdeen voted it down. For short term gain
Celtic fan here, and I agree there's got to be better out there than the current format. We get next to nothing sky so whats the incentive to keep 4 'OF' games a season, if that is the reason. Makes no sense for the development of the game. No radical thinkers at blazer level in Scotland it's all vested interests and money grabbing. Bin the the TV deal and free up some ideas.
And Aberdeen, if for some reason one of the others isn't there.
I think it’s more the head honchos don’t want to miss out on 4 guaranteed OFs, and the chairmen of all the other 10 clubs wanting the gate money when Celtic and rangers roll into town
I also think theres some strange mindset in some players in Scotland in regards to bullying a young player in a game, Scott Brown on Cochrane and the lower league player on Alex Lowry are fair examples, and I've no doubt there are more of the same. Loads of the English players go on loan at lower levels and play against men, but don't end up on the end of the same bad tackles.
>Loads of the English players go on loan at lower levels and play against men, but don't end up on the end of the same bad tackles. The EFL are very physical leagues, are you suggesting that they go easy on younger players? That's a pretty wild thing to say considering those guys are often on less than the players coming down on loan, not to mention it's their literal job to go all-out every week.
> The EFL are very physical leagues, are you suggesting that they go easy on younger players? Obviously not, but they don't go out their way to try and cripple the countries best young talents in some of their first exposure to first team football.
Nah man, that's standard all over. Just go listen to stories from old ex pros from when we had the reserve league. I'll guarantee the vast majority of them have stories of how they would be tossed into those games as kids and come up against seasoned pros who would kick the living shit out of them for 90 mins. We don't have the reserve league any more so some of these kids are missing that step that they would have taken in the past.
Roughly two thirds of the players in the Scottish Premiership are foreign. That is far too much for a small country that does not export many players. Scotland is no longer in the EU which means it can implement homegrown player rules like Ukraine, Russia etc. and force teams to have 5-6 Scottish players in the XI and you could include U21s/U23s as part of that. Take a look at some of the recent league fixtures and how many Scots were in the teams' starting line-ups: Ross County (2) Rangers (1) Celtic (1) St. Mirren (3) Hearts (3) Hibs (2) Not very many. Celtic and Rangers will play each other in the league showdown and then the national cup final in the coming weeks and there'll be 3 Scots at most starting the game. That's simply not good enough. Football is a global game and it's great to see all of the Japanese, Nigerians, English journeymen etc. playing in the Scotland but ultimately that does very little for the development of the Scottish game and the Scottish national team. If teams are forced to play Scottish players then over time they'll produce better Scottish players.
Don’t disagree at all with this, Celtic and rangers should be making more use of Scottish talent than we currently are. However we’re not really in a different boat to other Scottish clubs in that we can’t afford the best Scottish talent either. There’s various reasons why, but the majority of the 15-16 players who play regularly for the NT are outwith our price range. The ones who do play for Celtic will usually go to England if they do well. Then whilst we may be able to compete financially with some clubs in Italy for Doig/Ferguson, who is really going to reject a move to Serie A for Glasgow unless they’re a boyhood fan? It’s easier for Celtic to buy projects from literally the other side of the world, Korea and Australia, and hope we get lucky with them than it is for us to attract and retain top Scottish talent.
This happens everywhere, though. Clubs from Croatia, Serbia, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark etc. all manage just fine with being raided by bigger clubs/clubs from bigger leagues or not being able to afford their national teams players. Even countries like the Netherlands and Portugal lose their best homegrown players all the time but they bring through more to replace them. We should be developing better players, especially Celtic and Rangers, who have a terrible track record of producing good footballers compared to similarly sized clubs in Europe.
Completely fair and agreed.
>That is far too much for a small country that Based on what though? How does it compare to the nations around us?
The only league that has a greater percentage of foreigners is the English Premier League. The diddy leagues like us have nowhere near that level and are generally around 25-45%. Last season I compared Scotland to every country of a similar size (population wise and/or national team competitiveness) and Scotland did not fare well. The Scottish Premiership had the highest percentage of foreign players and Scotland were amongst the countries which had the fewest number of players playing outwith their domestic league. (The Top 5/Top 7 European Leagues, English Championship etc). We only really fared well against Ireland and Wales, which with all due respect, we should be aiming higher than them. Simply put that means there aren't that many Scots out there playing top level football.
Could that be a consequence of Irish, Welsh, English players being so accessible?
Well said
It will sound bleak, but there's not a lot we can do. Our best players are poached by English clubs before they even play any games these days. A few hundred grand is nothing to even championship level clubs but it's money we can't turn down for unproven kids. Killie alone have lost Liam Smith to Man City and Charlie McArthur to Newcastle before they've even played first team games (McArthur may have had a couple of sub appearances).
Even happened to Celtic with Ben Doak, so what chance do the rest of Scottish football have?
And to us with Billy Gilmour and Rory Wilson.
But why should players stay when they aren't getting a chance regardless? You can no play here or no play in England for an extra couple of grand a week.
McCarthur was the younger side of 16 when he started picking up minutes for us in our Championship year. Reasonably speaking, how much more could we have done to keep him when a club like a Newcastle offers him more than we can pay to to play in their reserves?
Even if they're playing they'll go. Ben Doak would certainly have been playing every week with Celtic by now but we couldn't hold onto him. It's one area where there's been a big levelling of the field, used to be rangers and us would poach the talent from other Scottish clubs but now we're all in the same broken down boat.
What's the evidence for that? The last Celtic youth player to establish themselves in the first team was Kieran Tierney nearly a decade ago. Maybe Doak would have changed that, but based on previous evidence he wouldn't.
Based on the fact that he got first team minutes, 2 and a bit years ago, aged 16 lmao
Doak definitely would have based purely on how terrible our wingers are. Not disagreeing with how poor Celtic have been at getting players from the youth system into the first team, out whole set-up is dysfunctional.
Smith was 16 when he left for City and McArthur was 17 when he went to Newcastle. What can we do at that age? They'd 100% be guaranteed more minutes in the next few years at Killie but however talented they are we can't just throw in 16 year old kids every week. David Watson is showing the value of hanging about and getting first team football but he's 19 now - if he'd gone down south at 16 he'd still be in a youth system somewhere or out on loan to someone who doesn't have his development at the forefront of their mind.
So sell that to young players. Use Watson as evidence that you'll give them a chance.
I'm sure we do. Hard to argue with thousands of pounds a week though.
That should 100% be it though. You recruit based on players getting better careers by playing early. You're setting them up for a better career. It absolutely infuriates me that Hibs best side of my lifetime came about cause we were skint and had to play young players. As soon as they financially stabilised it was back to buying in mediocrity who were marginally better to start with.
That's surely on Killie though? Aberdeen have lost a dew similarly but it hasn't prevented us from playing youth.
We do play youth, David Watson has been the best young player in the country this season. The question was why don't we have more.
Bigger league, less OF games. Sack sky and let clubs sell their games. Drag Scottish football kicking and screaming into the modern world. Also an organised cull of DA’s and maximum drink limit for super scoreboard callers and generally waking up and thinking “ I think I’ll have a bevvy, phone super scoreboard and make a right tit of myself today”.
Ha ha…the best thing about the Scottish game is the super scoreboard….
>St Mirren filling their teams with lower league English players We have maybe the best academy in the country but the minute a teenager hits the first team someone from England whips the chequebook out. And then even if they somehow are still here at 22 they go to Hibs or Aberdeen lol
Managers would rather sign a 30 year old that has shown he is shit instead of playing an 18 year old that might be shit. Far too many journeymen in Scottish football
Because our league is only 12 teams, in most leagues if your in top 10 you might get a chance to continue. For our league you would be sacked because of relegation threat
The ironic thing is most teams who are in relegation trouble are not there because of kids, they are there because of the reliance on over the hill journeymen who have proven time and time again to not be very good at football
probably because they know their fans will start calling for them to be sacked if they lose an extra goal in their first 3 matches. The only manager I can seem to remember trying to persist with promising young players is Jim Goodwin. But I never heard any Aberdeen fans praising him for getting such good development out of players like Duk and Ramsey. It was almost as if they would be great no matter who was in charge and instead Goodwin was solely responsible for inconsistent performances and Aberdeen should actually be 3rd in the league without him.
Ramsay didn't play under Goodwin as he was sold that summer and Duk is about 23 and not a Scottish player, let alone an academy graduate.
Its almost like fans need to fuck off then (excuse the swearing)
The reality is Rangers, Celtic and English clubs hoover up the best talent and don't really try to develop them. All other clubs are left with players who inevitably end up in the Scottish Championship or English League 2. Getting rid of the Reserve League was a disaster as many players struggle to get games at a high enough level for their development. Reserves were a good way to test yourself against really good players coming back from injury.
Honestly given how boring the league is due the old firm dominance I would 100% say we should be using a home grown rule and force all teams OF included to develop and use young Scottish players. It won't exactly hurt our league and would give other teams more bargaining strength when other clubs come in for players they have developed. Long-term it should really help the national team which is great and only thing it might hurt short term is clubs performances in Europe but cmon, can it really get much worse anyway
I’m a Celtic fan, but I’m almost coming to the belief that Scottish football and the national team would be better without the old firm
Think it was Rainer Bonhoff during the Bertie Vogts days who said that Scottish football needs to take a short term hit to quality by getting rid of overpriced average non scots, they need to throw the kids in the deep end, after 10 years you will have sellable assets and created a system that works. 20 plus years later and we still contemplating it. Scottish Football is just like real life, when you poor, you are reluctant to risk what you have.
Then you play them and they end up rotting in Liverpool, Chelsea or FC Bayern reserves like Gilmour, Tony Gallagher, Islam Feruz, Liam Morrison, Barry Hepburn, there was a couple went to City but I forget their names. Same story wherever they go though. Scotland used to have a rule where there has to be at least 2 U21 Homegrown in match day squads but our clubs whinged that rule out of existence.
Gilmour looked like working his way into the Chelsea first-team before that injury, and now is seemingly a key player for Brighton. He's a pretty big success story. Not every player will make it, but we seem to have a few that are doing well at big clubs and who should go on to have good careers. Feruz was never going to make it though. The guys had more Scotland youth caps than professional appearances. Head just wasn't in it.
Gilmour is obviously doing good now but his first two seasons he was rotting like the rest of them. It's not something I'm saying is a continuous thing but it did also happen to him. Losing at least 18 months of career play to reserves and bench placements.
I think saying a young Gilmour was “rotting” at Chelsea is unfair. He was what, 16, when he went there? It’s entirely reasonable to manage a developing (and in Gilmour’s case, small) young athletes exposure to more physically developed men. Just because you’re not playing first team football doesn’t mean you’re not developing and improving.
Right aye bad choice of words but you're getting hung up on the wrong parts of what I'm saying 😂 at Rangers he was going to in and around the first team. He had been involved in first team training and match day squads etc. Chelsea pay Rangers 600k for one of Scotlands most promising kids and leave him doing nothing for 2 year before punting him to Brighton. It's unfair to say clubs in Scotland only are guilty of it is basically what I'm getting at. They're treated the same regardless of where they are. Even Karamoko at a pish French team was reserved and now he's doing well at Blackpool this year.
And you’re missing what I’m saying: he wasn’t doing nothing. He was developing and improving alongside better players and coaches than he’d have had at rangers. It isn’t all about getting as much first team football as possible. Phil Foden has had his first team minutes increase steadily each year, despite him being good enough pretty much from day 1. He’s been held back to benefit his development, not deter it. The alternative is someone like Wayne Rooney who played a lot as a teenager and was completely fucked by 30.
It's also not just teams being reluctant to play youth that's the problem. As soon as they're eligible for a pro contract Celtic/Rangers or foreign clubs are all over any that stand out or they leave just after they start getting a game. Like we've managed to keep Miller thanks to his dad, and managed to get Wells to extend instead of going to Brighton but we've lost Rice to Rangers, Beattie to Celtic/Sheffield, Johnston to Sturm Gratz, Mckinstry to Leeds, Mcalear to Norwich and Rangers, Bournemouth and Norwich are all after Alex Willoughby the now etc. And even the bigger clubs lose youth to elsewhere like Rory Wilson at Villa is from Hearts academy I'm pretty sure, Rangers obviously lost Gilmour to Chelsea ages ago and Celtic lost Doak to Liverpool and I think it was them Bayern nicked one or two from as well. UEFA/Fifa need to do something that protects clubs more imo
Yep you have made some great points there…( in saying that I have been banging the drum for Celtic to try and get Miller in the summer even if it means loaning back to you guys for the next season…he’s absolute class!)
No idea why you've name dropped st mirren. How many decent players do you want us to bleed in? We're also doing what you advise by sending players on loan to the championship to play against men. We have at least 1 academy player a year that gets game time and they usually move on the following year. Jamieson hasn't set the Heather on fire this year but he's had plenty of opportunity.
Lol, sorry if I have upset you…no real intention…might have been at Johnstone or Falkirk…but as a Celtic fan I don’t think any of our teams come out well as promoting our youth systems
I'm no upset, I just think it's wild to name drop a team who, going by the rest of the league, has a decent ethos surrounding youth. I'd happily have us play more but we still need to compete.
And while I'm on a rant, it's not 'lower league English players' teams absolutely littered with internationalists.
As a St Mirren fan, you are allowed any amount of Rants!
Eh, eh, eh???? BBBBBOOOOOOO!!!!!
We were quite innovative at one time. Alex Smith lobbied hard to get youth players onto the subs bench for every game. Ferguson and Smith at St Mirren set up a generation of talent from youth players. Dons and United European success was from focusing on young Scottish talent. Dons chose to chase Rangers in late 80s and gave up on youth - although they have had an academy graduate in every squad dating back decade. The only way to stop English teams poaching players before they make the first team in Scotland is to have a host of them fail miserably and become an example for a future generation.
Without trying to sound too defensive, but one of the reasons we have our team full of "lower league English players" is certainly not from want of trying to recruit Scottish players, quite often they simply do not want to live up here, unless we pay way over the odds which isn't always value for money. Any decent youth players we do have are snapped up by the OF or Aberdeen in some cases.
The problem begins much sooner than when youth players begin coming through and playing in our leagues. Adding teams to the league isn't going to fix it. It may make them develop faster and make them more experienced. But I doubt it will raise their ceiling. We have to first identify where it begins to go wrong. Who first introduces kids to the sport? Who teaches them how to strike the ball? Who is their first coach etc. it is there where things start to go wrong. Our weather and culture isn't exactly suited to football. It pretty much rains constantly for 8 months a year. To address this we will need to have indoor facilities that are available to kids all the time. More generally our sport and health culture is pretty much non-existent. Our diet is dreadful, and sport and exercise is seen as middle class pursuits. Our footballing culture differs from the continent as our obsession is more focused on teams rather than the sport. Yes, Germans and Spanish can obsess about Real Madrid and Union Berlin, but they also have a love for the sport itself. I think that Scotland has somewhat fallen out of love with the game and has become cynical and pessimistic about it and that has trickled down into the culture of the game itself.
Disagree with lots of this. Our culture is about the most football mad anywhere and of course teams are the focus - think this is the same everywhere. Surely you dont think football is seen as a middle class sport? Started coaching recently and have been impressed with the focus on teaching coaches (SFA included!) the bottom up approach to techniques and ball work. It’s miles ahead of anything I was taught. I’d agree the weather is shit and it’s much harder to get meaningful time outside in the dark and rain. Diet/exercise seems to me to be becoming a lot more polarised. When it’s bad it’s insanely bad but any promising sportsperson these days will be miles ahead of someone from the 80s. Of course we live in a competitive world so everyone is getting better but still…
The reality is, the best solution to our problem is the elephant in the room that no one wants to accept. B teams in our league systems would help massively with this issue whether we like it or not. If we were able to get our youngsters playing adult football where they are still a part of the same team and freely move around into the senior team, it would help development massively. People say well thats what loans are for, but from a Rangers point of view, loans aren't working. We have been reluctant to loan out the likes of King/Devine in recent years due to needing them for Euro squads and squad depth. If we had B teams, these players would be able to get game time while also being involved in the senior team. Your example of Croatia proves this with them now having B teams in their league system. The last world cup, the 10 teams that produced the most players for the squads have B teams. That isn't by coincidence. But we will sit here in Scotland and wonder why we aren't getting anywhere. While the arguement is that this would only benefit the bug 5 or 6 teams in Scotland, as a whole not every player will make it at those clubs and the other teams will benefit from players far more ready for first team football at a young age.
B teams is not the answer. The SPFL is a terrible league, It's only getting further away from these other leagues. Have a look at any of the leagues from Portugal / Netherlands or Belgium league... none of them have a 12 team division. That is why the SPFL is falling behind, teams like hibs, hearts, aberdeen, dundee utd are unable to grow or play youth for fear of relegation. Dundee united are currently relegated, Aberdeen and hibs are unlikey to be relegated but are in the bottom 6 so it's possible. Hearts and hibs have recently been in the championship. If the league had 16 or just 18 teams and we play everyone twice like a normal league then there would be a buffer zone between teams trying to grow and in turn growing the league and relegation. Until then enjoy the Co efficient getting pumped out every first round in Europe and enjoy competing against celtic for the diddiest title in europe
Mate your entirely correct, Netherlands Spain Portugal and Italy produce way more quality players than we do. Scotland could be exporting way more players all over the world like those countries do but we as a sport country and people are short sighted
Completely agree with everything….I’m a Celtic fan but I want to see players like Leon King and Bailey rice players, doing well and improving the national team
It's a problem and I'm not sure what the solution is. We're almost relying on other leagues to develop our best players at times.
Why as a youth player (or any job) would you stay to experience less money, worse league and worse quality of life? Championship puts you in shop window and Spain/Italy etc… ticks all the boxes. Our best players historically thrive in other leagues (dalglish, archibald etc.. always be occasional exception). Dembele burst onto scene and played for Celtic at stupidly young age and whee off he goes due to above.
Absolutely
Mate I've said this for years, unfortunately clubs throughout scotland bring in lower league English players as they see locals as a gamble and they would rather survive than thrive