You are the chairman of a Scottish Premier League football club. A lower division team has made you a loan proposal for an 18-year-old, inexperienced rookie striker who is knocking on the door of the first team. Your options are as follows.
You can: (a) encourage your manager to pursue the player exchange strategy by bringing young prospects into the team.
(b) agree to the player going out on loan after accepting that a season playing against men from League One could do him a world of good and benefit his club in the long term.
(c) Inform the boy and his agent that unless a financially challenged lower division team agrees to contribute £200 a week to his salary, he can remain in the development squad until further notice.
In Scottish football, option C is sadly common. And nothing sums up the disaster of youth development better than the greedy antics of directors with an MBA in short-term thinking.
In 2020, Hibernian and Stenhousemuir came up with a plan to develop more young players for the Easter Street first team. The Premiership B teams were going broke and here was the next best option.
Scots manager Clarke says he needs to protect Ben Doak, top right, and bring him in slowly.
Talented young Scots are not given the chance to play for either Celtic or Rangers
Lennon Miller is an exception among young Scots who regularly play in the top flight.
A strategic alliance would see Hibs send their boys to Larbert to study at Ochilview College. They would be turned into Warriors in the tough school of League Two. Stenhousemuir would use some of the brightest boys in the country to bolster their promotion push. In theory, everyone would win.
In practice, not everyone understood the benefits. During a Zoom meeting to explain the concept to other clubs, former Stenhousemuir chairman Iain McMenemy recalls being warned by a Premier League colleague that there was no way he would loan a young player to a lower-division team unless they paid for him.
Raising a couple of hundred pounds a week from a part-time membership barely able to keep the lights on was more important than giving young active players the chance to get out and learn the game.
Bear this in mind if chairmen and chief executives are asked to vote on a new plan to help elite young players make the transition to first-team football before the end of the season.
Next week, the SPFL’s Competitions Working Group will meet with the authors of an SFA report recommending the adoption of club cooperation arrangements similar to those modelled in Hungary and Croatia.
The plan is to make it easier for young academy players to move between their home club and a lower-league team outside of transfer windows. To do so, a resolution could be submitted to the 42 senior clubs before May, which would require a change in league rules.
Any plan that benefits Premier League teams *and* lower leagues and protects the future of the Scotland national team should be approved by an overwhelming majority. The greater good *should* win.
But before making a decision, presidents and CEOs will ask themselves the same old question: What’s in it for us?
In Scottish football, narrow self-interest often triumphs and the proposals will please neither the top-flight clubs, who fear it will cost them a few quid, nor the lower-division clubs, who are forced to make do with crumbs while Aberdeen happily loan their best young players to Cove Rangers.
If presidents conclude that there is nothing to gain, the establishment will prevail and the national game will continue its course with a demographic bomb that will die down from below.
Last season, Rangers had a Scottish Under-21 player on the pitch for just 26 minutes in their first 33 Premiership games. Celtic had one of the same age group on for just 89 minutes in total. Both were indicative of a wider trend.
While players such as David Watson, Lennon Miller and Lyall Cameron offer hope, they are the exception in a league where English loan signings and foreign players often block the first-team ambitions of promising youngsters. And if the supply chain of Billy Gilmours or John McGinns dries up, the consequences for Scotland’s future managers are grim.
The SFA report, authored by SFA director of football Andy Gould and head of men’s elite strategy Chris Docherty, calls for cultural change at the highest levels of the game.
Premier League managers can now send young players to play for the first team at Ayr, Dunfermline, Falkirk or Raith Rovers if they see fit. The only thing they won’t do is field them in their own starting eleven.
While Luis de la Fuente allows 17-year-old Lamine Yamal to develop wings and fly for Spain, Scotland manager Steve Clarke spoke last week of “protecting” 18-year-old Ben Doak and bringing him slowly forward.
What young players like Ben Doak need is not protection, but a coach willing to put them in the first team.
The last thing Celtic need is another Vlad night
The Champions League format has changed and it really is time for Celtic’s woeful record in the competition to follow suit.
It is now 12 months since the Parkhead board announced record sums in the bank before losing their deposit in the opening group game against Feyenoord.
Forced to spend a good chunk of that money on players like Arne Engels, Adam Idah, Auston Trusty and Paulo Bernardo, they did not shell out £30m to beat Ross County and St Johnstone every week. Europe is where they will be judged.
Surprisingly, the club has never won its first match in the Champions League group stage.
Celtic players walk off the pitch after a 5-0 defeat to Slovakia’s Artmedia in 2005
The infamous result is there for all to see on a gloomy night for Celtic in Bratislava
The curtain has been raised twelve times and the lights have gone out after ten defeats and two 0-0 draws.
They will never have a better chance of remedying that than at home to Slovan Bratislava on Wednesday night. And knowing that comes with its own pressure.
If they win, they are ready to fly. If they fail, they will be an embarrassment to Europe again. Again.
Everyone remembers what happened the last time Celtic faced a hopeless Slovakian team.
The 5-0 defeat in the first leg against Artmedia Bratislava remains one of the club’s most humiliating nights.
Two decades on, veteran manager Vladimir Weiss returns to the Parkhead coaching area with Slovan this week. And, after two paltry wins in 14 games for Scottish sides in Europe this season, the last thing the battered coefficient needs is another Vlad night.
Clement must avoid soap bubbles in Dundee
D-Day in Dundee sounds like the latest blockbuster action movie starring Gerard Butler.
It’s actually a local soap opera starring Philippe Clement, and it might have more twists and turns than an episode of River City.
The City of Discovery has not offered much hospitality to Belgians in the past.
Clement watches training ahead of Sunday’s tough mission at Tannadice
Last season’s title challenge was cut short faster than the Dens Park pitch after a 0-0 draw in April.
Any result other than a win at Tannadice tomorrow could see the match end in the same way. Rangers would be back in the cycle of repeating the same process that chairman John Bennett is so desperate to avoid.
The return of the team and fans to Ibrox next weekend should be a cause for joy. If another title run fails in Dundee, local amenities could be in short supply.
