STEPHEN McGOWAN: Young players are becoming an endangered species in the Scottish Premiership

According to the World Wildlife Fund, climate change is putting one in nine Scottish animal species at risk of extinction.

It’s not just hedgehogs and squirrels going the way of the dodo and Third Lanark. The most endangered creatures of all are Scottish footballers in the SPFL Premiership.

When Hearts played Rangers in the opening game of the season, only seven of the 22 starters were born or raised on Scottish soil. Celtic’s 4-0 win over Kilmarnock featured nine players from these airts and pairts.

On Monday night St Johnstone and Aberdeen started with three Scots each. Fair play to the Dundee derby for reaching double figures.

Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen won European trophies with teams full of Scots. After Bosman, you’re more likely to see Nessie teed off in time than you are to see a team full of Jock Tamson’s kids playing in the top flight. Most of the players who make the cut are over 23, which poses a serious obstacle to the ambitions of the best young talents.

Kilmarnock pair David Watson and Bobby Wales, Motherwell’s Lennon Miller, Dundee’s Lyle Cameron and Dundee United’s Miller Thomson offer hope to academy prospects everywhere. However, most players aged between 17 and 21 are at risk of serious injury as they face an army of foreign journeymen and loan signings from England.

Partick Thistle goalkeeper Mason McCready made his first-team debut in last week’s Premier Sports Cup clash with Motherwell, and the 21-year-old had a day to remember.

A great performance was crowned with a penalty save in the sudden death shoot-out. A Firhill prospect from the age of 13, he had waited years for his chance. And when it came, he took it.

That didn’t stop Thistle boss Kris Doolan from loaning Watford keeper Myles Roberts on a season-long loan. A week after realising his dream, McCready was back on the bench for Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Morton.

For all anyone knows, Myles Roberts could be the next Kasper Schmeichel or Jack Butland. The point here is that Thistle would rather develop a 22-year-old loan signing from an English club than one of their own academy graduates. And that reflects a damaging trend at clubs across the country.

Managers like to repeat the old idea that you have to ‘protect’ the first-team star players.

Young players don’t need protection so much as first-team experience; a chance to show what they can do.

A week after a great debut, young McCready was sacked in favour of an equally inexperienced keeper who had been brought in on loan from a club in England. If that is the definition of protection, you wouldn’t want to see the hairdryer appear.

There’s a bigger problem than one player at Partick Thistle. Since 2019, the country’s biggest clubs have shunned the SPFL Reserve League and flooded their first teams with players from other countries. Attempts to field Premiership teams in the senior leagues never amount to anything. And the failure to give academy prospects a serious shot at competitive football is scandalous.

Talents like Ben Doak, Rory Wilson or Liam Morrison flee to England or Germany because they know they won’t learn anything from playing in the Lowland League. Some can’t even be loaned to the lower divisions because poor part-time clubs can’t afford the loan fees. It’s a ridiculous situation.

You can understand why managers play it safe by leaning on experienced old lags. Taking a chance on wet-behind-the-ears rookies is a gamble some can’t afford.

Data released by football statistics website Transfermarkt shows that half of the Premiership teams fail to give at least 50 percent of their available playing time to a single player aged 21 or under. In a list of the 15 best European leagues, the SPFL is ranked 11th, behind Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, France and a host of others.

A 12-team top flight, with no room for error, offers no excuse. As champions of a 12-team Danish Superliga, FC Copenhagen reached the knockout stages of the Champions League while giving their under-21s considerably more time than Celtic or Rangers. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Everyone has a theory about what is wrong with Scottish football. The same two teams calling the shots year after year, no summer football, artificial pitches, low broadcasting revenues and the incompetence of the SFA and SPFL.

Yet week after week a ticking time bomb is staring the national game in the face. Players who grew up in Scotland are becoming as rare as the osprey and when one overseas jobber after another surfaces in the final days of the transfer window, no one will care.

Celtic neto get to the heart of the matter about Idah

If Celtic want clubs to stop making low bids for Matt O’Riley, they need to lead by example when it comes to Adam Idah.

The Parkhead club have become the big transfer tyre kickers of Scottish football. They walk into the showroom, wave a bunch of keys and look at the model they want.

When a price is mentioned, there is a quick breath and a bid is made that everyone knows will never seal the deal.

Then follows the annoying back-and-forth chatter, while the manager waits outside, checking his watch and running the engine.

They took weeks to complete a £3.5m deal for Paulo Bernardo from Benfica. They went with a £4.5m bid for Idah in the hope that English Championship side Norwich would collapse, fold and simply take the money. They didn’t.

Now, weeks after the first offer was rejected, serious attempts are being made to complete the deal and bring in another striker.

Hardball tactics are fine when the buyer has a strong hand. But right now, Rodgers has just one fit and firing striker in Kyogo Furuhashi, while Daizen Maeda missed the season opener with an injury. The manager is one tight hamstring away from having no strikers to call upon at all.

Earlier this week, Celtic published a trading update informing the stock market of profits that were ‘significantly ahead of previous expectations’.

It’s time to stop messing around and use all that money to give the manager the tools he needs to get the job done, starting right away with Adam Idah.