STEPHEN McGOWAN: It’s not protection our young players need … it’s managers who will play them

You are the chairman of a Scottish Premiership football club. Presented with a loan proposal from a part-time lower league team for the raw, untried 18-year-old striker banging on the first team door, your choices are as follows.

You can: (a) encourage your manager to pursue the player-trading strategy by bleeding young prospects into the team.

(b) agree to let the player go out on loan after accepting that a season playing against men in League One might do him the world of good and benefit your club in the long run.

(c) Inform the kid and his agent that, unless the cash-strapped, lower league team agree to chip in £200-a-week to his wages he can stew in the development team until further notice.

In Scottish football, option C is depressingly common. And nothing sums up the shambles of youth development more than the grasping, short-sighted management of those responsible.

In 2020, Hibernian and Stenhousemuir hit on a plan to develop more young players for the Easter Road first team. Premiership B teams were a busted flush and here was the next best thing.

Young talented Scots are not getting a chance to play for either  Celtic or Rangers

Lennon Miller is an exception among young Scots in playing regularly in top flight

A strategic partnership would see Hibs send their boys to Larbert to study at the University of Ochilview. They’d turn them into Warriors in the tough old finishing school of League Two. Stenhousemuir would utilise some of the brightest kids in the country to bolster their push for promotion. Everyone, in theory, would be a winner.

In practice, not everyone grasped the benefits. During a Zoom meeting to explain the concept to other clubs, former Stenhousemuir chairman Iain McMenemy recalls one Premiership counterpart warning him there was no way he’d ever loan a young player to a lower league team unless they paid for him.

Raking in a couple of hundred quid a week from a part-time club barely capable of keeping the floodlights on mattered more than developing the first-team assets of the future.

Bear that in mind if chairmen and chief execs are asked to vote on a new blueprint 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 the authors of an SFA report recommending the adoption of club co-operation agreements similar to those modelled in Hungary and Croatia.

The plan is to make it easier for young academy players to move between their parent club and a lower league feeder team outwith transfer windows. Requiring a change of league rules, a resolution could be put before the 42 senior clubs by May.

Any plan which benefits teams in the Premiership *and* the lower leagues and protects the future of Scotland’s national team should be voted through by a landslide. The greater good *should* be the winner.

Before they make up their minds, however, chairmen and chief execs will ask themselves the same old question. What’s in it for us?

In Scottish football, petty self interest usually wins the day and the proposals won’t appeal to top-flight clubs who fear it might cost them a few quid. Or to lower league clubs forced to settle for crumbs from the table while their promotion rivals snag loan players from Celtic or Rangers.

If chairmen conclude there’s nothing in it for them, the status quo will prevail. And the national game will bumble on with a demographic time bomb ticking away underneath.

Last season Rangers had a Scottish under-21 player on the field for a mere 26 minutes across the first 33 Premiership matches. Celtic had one in the same age group for just 89 minutes in total. Both were indicative of a wider trend.

While players like David Watson, Lennon Miller and Lyall Cameron offer hope, they’re the exceptions in a league where English loan signings and overseas journeymen routinely block the first-team ambitions of young hopefuls. And, if the supply chain of Billy Gilmours or John McGinns dries up, the implications for future Scotland managers are bleak.

The SFA report compiled by SFA chief football officer Andy Gould and head of men’s elite strategy Chris Docherty seeks a cultural shift at the top end of the game.

Premiership managers can already send young players to play first-team football at Ayr, Dunfermline, Falkirk or Raith Rovers if they see fit. The one thing they won’t do is field them in their own first 11.

While Luis de la Fuente allows 17-year-old Lamine Yamal to sprout wings and fly for Spain, Scotland boss Steve Clarke spoke last week of ‘protecting’ 18-year-old Ben Doak and bringing him through slowly.

It’s not protection young players like Ben Doak need. It’s a manager willing to play them in the first team.  

Last thing Celtic need is another Vlad night

The Champions League format has changed and it really is time for Celtic’s awful record in the competition to do the same.

Twelve months have passed since the Parkhead board slipped out news of record sums in the bank before losing their deposit in the opening group game against Feyenoord.

Harangued into spending a chunk of that money on the likes of Arne Engels, Adam Idah, Auston Trusty and Paulo Bernardo, they didn’t splash out £30million to knock down Ross County and St Johnstone every week. Europe is where they’ll be judged.

Remarkably, the club have never won their opening fixture in the Champions League group stages.

Celtic players troop off after 5-0 defeat to Slovakians Artmedia in 2005

The infamous scoreline is there for all to see on a grim night for Celtic in Bratislava

Twelve times the curtain has gone up and the lights have dimmed after ten defeats and two 0-0 draws.

They’ll never have a better chance to put that right than at home against Slovan Bratislava on Wednesday night. And that knowledge brings its own pressure.

Win and they’re off to a flier. Fail and they’re back to being an embarrassment in Europe. Again.

Everyone remembers what happened the last time Celtic faced a team of Slovakian no-hopers.

A 5-0 first leg defeat to Artmedia Bratislava remains one of the club’s most humiliating nights.

Two decades later, veteran coach Vladimir Weiss returns to Parkhead technical area with Slovan this week. And, after a paltry two wins in 14 games for Scottish teams in Europe this season, the last thing the battered co-efficient needs is another Vlad night.

Clement must avoid soapy bubble in Dundee    

D-DAY in Dundee sounds like the latest action movie blockbuster starring Gerard Butler.

It’s actually a local soap opera starring Philippe Clement, and there could be more twists and turns than an episode of River City.

The City of Discovery hasn’t offered much hospitality to the Belgian in the past.

Clement watches training ahead of Sunday’s tricky assignment at Tannadice

Last season’s title challenge cut up faster than the Dens Park pitch after a 0-0 draw in April.

Anything other than a win at Tannadice tomorrow could see this one go the same way. Rangers would be back in the cycle of rinse and repeat that chairman John Bennett is so desperate to avoid.

A return to Ibrox for the team and fans next weekend should be warming the cockles. If another title race founders in Dundee, home comforts could be thin on the ground.