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. You receive a loan offer from a part-time lower league team for the inexperienced, inexperienced 18-year-old striker who is knocking on the first team door. Your choices are as follows.

You can: (a) Encourage your manager to follow the player exchange strategy by bringing young talents into the team.

(b) agree to loan the player out, having accepted that a season playing against men in League One could do him a lot of good and be beneficial to your club in the long term.

(c) Let the boy and his agent know that unless the cash-strapped lower division team agrees to contribute £200 a week to his salary, he can remain in the development team until further notice.

In Scottish football, option C is depressingly common. And nothing sums up the shambles of youth development better than the greedy, short-sighted management of those in charge.

In 2020, Hibernian and Stenhousemuir hatched a plan to develop more young players for the Easter Road first team. Premiership B teams were a flop and this was the next best thing.

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

In practice, not everyone understood the benefits. During a Zoom meeting to explain the concept to other clubs, former Stenhousemuir chairman Iain McMenemy recalled being warned by a Premiership colleague that he would never loan a young player to a lower-division team unless they paid for him.

Earning a few hundred euros a week with a club that can barely keep things going was more important than training the talents of the future for the first team.

Bear this in mind as chairmen and chief executives vote on a new plan to help top young players make the step up to the first team before the end of the season.

Next week the SPFL’s Competition Working Group will meet with the authors of an SFA report which recommends the establishment of club co-operation agreements, following the examples of Hungary and Croatia.

The plan is to make it easier for young academy players to move between their parent club and a lower-tier feeder team outside transfer windows. A resolution calling for a change to the competition rules could be put to the 42 senior clubs in May.

Any plan that benefits teams in the Premiership *and* the lower divisions and protects the future of the Scottish national team should be passed overwhelmingly. The greater good *should* win.

But before they form their opinions, chairmen and chief executives will ask themselves the same old question: What’s in it for us?

In Scottish football, petty self-interest usually wins out and the proposals will not go down well with top clubs worried about costing them a few pennies, or with lower league clubs forced to make do with scraps from the table while their promotion rivals borrow players from Celtic or Rangers.

If chairmen conclude that there is nothing in it for them, the status quo will remain. And the national game will continue with a demographic time bomb ticking underneath.

Last season, Rangers had a Scottish under-21 player on the field for just 26 minutes in their first 33 Premiership games of the season. 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 are exceptions in a league where English loan deals and foreign 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 Scottish managers are bleak.

The SFA report, written by SFA Head of Football Andy Gould and Men’s Elite Strategy Director Chris Docherty, calls for a cultural shift at the top of the game.

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

While Luis de la Fuente is giving 17-year-old Lamine Yamal the chance to grow wings and fly for Spain, Scotland manager Steve Clarke spoke last week of ‘protecting’ 18-year-old Ben Doak and allowing him to progress slowly.

It’s not protection that young players like Ben Doak need, it’s a manager who is willing to let them play in the first team.

The last thing Celtic need is another Vlad night

The format of the Champions League has changed and it is high time that Celtic do the same, given their poor record in the competition.

It is now twelve months since the Parkhead board broke the news of record amounts in the bank before losing their credit in the opening group game against Feyenoord.

They were pushed to spend a lot of that money on players like Arne Engels, Adam Idah, Auston Trusty and Paulo Bernardo, but they haven’t spent £30m every week beating Ross County and St Johnstone. Europe is where they will be judged.

Remarkably, the club has never won the opening match of the Champions League group stage.

The curtain rose and the lights went out twelve times after ten defeats and two 0-0 draws.

They will never get a better chance to put that right than at home to Slovan Bratislava on Wednesday night, and that knowledge brings its own pressure.

Win and they soar to success. Fail and they are a disgrace in Europe. Again.

Everyone remembers what happened the last time Celtic played a hopeless Slovakian team.

The 5-0 defeat in the first leg against Artmedia Bratislava remains one of the most humiliating nights for the club.

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

Clement must avoid bubble in Dundee

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

It’s basically a local soap opera starring Phillipe Clement, and it has more surprises than an episode of River City.

The City of Discoveries has not offered much hospitality to the Belgians in the past.

Last season’s title race was settled more quickly than on the Dens Park pitch, following a 0-0 draw in April.

Anything short of a win at Tannadice tomorrow could see this game go the same way, with Rangers settling back into the rinse and repeat cycle that chairman John Bennett is so keen to avoid.

A return to Ibrox for the team and fans next weekend should warm the cockles. If another title race fails in Dundee, home comforts could be few and far between.