Step in the right direction… meeting next week to discuss plan to give young Scottish players more first-team opportunities

Next week sees a step forward in plans to address the lack of first-team opportunities for young players in Scottish football.

A report commissioned by the SFA’s Professional Game Board outlines the challenges faced by youth players aiming to break into the first-team.

Damning statistics showed that in their first 33 Premier League games last season, Rangers had a Scottish Under-21 player on the pitch for just 26 minutes, while Celtic had just one player on the pitch for a total of 89 minutes.

The report’s authors – SFA head of football Andy Gould and head of men’s elite strategy Chris Docherty – will meet with the SPFL’s Competitions Working Group next week to advocate for club-to-club partnerships such as those established in Hungary and Croatia.

This would make it easier for young players to move between their home club and lower divisions outside the transfer window.

Lennon Miller (right) is one of the young players who has benefited from the first-team promotion

Miller is congratulated after scoring his first international goal for the Under-21s this week

The move will require a change to the competition rules and the Competitions Working Group will be asked to put the issue to a vote of Scotland’s 42 senior clubs before the end of the season.

Other measures recommended in the report include innovations to encourage the participation of young Scottish players in cup competitions, a scholarship system to discourage cross-border moves once players turn 16, and a review of the entire youth development strategy.

Attempts to push Premiership B teams into the lower divisions of Scottish football have repeatedly failed.

And with top clubs likely to prefer partnerships with teams in the Championship or the top half of League One, there is no guarantee the new proposals will be adopted.

Strategic partnerships between Scottish clubs are not unheard of.

In 2020, Hibernian signed a unique partnership with then League Two club Stenhousemuir.

Although the move ultimately came to nothing, former Stenhousemuir chairman Iain McMenemy believes the idea is worth exploring.

“I’ve always believed this was absolutely one of the best routes – if not the best route – for Scottish football,” McMenemy told Mail Sport.

‘I think there are probably a lot of clubs in League One and League Two who see it as their job to help develop Scottish talent.

‘And that could be good for the club, because then they bring in really good players who can in principle play in the first team.

‘The most important thing is that the bigger club is fully committed to it.

‘What we had with Hibernian was a written agreement.

“It wasn’t dependent on money going back and forth. It was dependent on a strong effort from both sides.

‘The guys (at Hibs) like Jack Ross and Graeme Mathie got it. They got straight into it and saw the absolute benefits of it. When they both left the club, it fell apart. The board didn’t see it as the right way to go

‘If they could get players through the system in a much more strategic way, I think it would benefit the game as a whole. But it’s very difficult to get people to agree on anything in Scottish football.’