6 year rebuilding plan like Berti Vogts suggestion

[parsforlife]

So the blueprint's title is "Project Brave"... jings !!

Some of the aspects appear fairly uncontroversial.

However, limiting the top academy level to 8 clubs and replacing the Development League with an SPFL Trophy requiring a minimum number of over-agers are clearly controversial.

Many advocate slashing the number of players being developed but that must have risks, too.


Notably, in those respects it is basically "ripping it up and starting again" though, btw. Again. Again.


EDIT: Article linked from that claims Rangers, Celtic, Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen are definitely in the "Elite 8", plus Hamilton will get the nod having been on the working group alongside Falkirk-Forth Valley as it's supported by SFA. Leaves all other clubs fighting for the last place.

If forth valley get in Fife elite also get in. If either don't then what does that say for the joint enterprises that the SFA worked hard on getting set up, tearing up a structure after a couple of years and telling clubs to get on with it after actively encouraging winding up individual academies.

Playing the same teams repeatedly is not healthy at all for development. You end up learning a more limited skill set.

Can't see benefit to Spfl trophy. If clubs are happy playing overage players they already do, and if they don't want to play them all we are going to see is coaches naming themselves or calling on mates to be Jersey fillers, forcing better younger players that the club wants to develop out the side. How is that good for development?

Encouraging more loan use is positive but you wonder what obstacles are in place currently that can be removed? Be interested to see how they action that.

Whole narative that the 'glorified community teams' are at fault. Is disrespectful and doesn't add up under any scrutiny.

17-18 structure(league?) sounds good but what does that mean when you only have 10-11 players on modern apprenticeships over the full u20 age range. Splitting them is difficult, some years there would only be 2 or 3 of them.

[parsforlife]

Oh and of the automatic 5, only hibs are currently a top half development league side. Hamilton aren't either

[ayrmad]

Makes us look like a bunch of amateurs IMHO.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jun/08/iceland-stunning-rise-euro-2016-gylfi-sigurdsson-lars-lagerback

3 year olds being coached by UEFA A and B.

The result is a spread of expertise right down to the lowest level. “Here you need a Uefa B licence to coach from under-10 level up and half of the Uefa B licence to coach under-eights,” Dagur Sveinn Dagbjartsson of the Icelandic FA says. This isn’t simply box-ticking. The Uefa B is one step off the level needed to coach a professional team in England. Yelling dads it ain’t.

Here's a snippet from another article.

 

In 1984, Icelandic player Asgeir Sigurvinsson was voted best player in the German Bundesliga after captaining his side VFB Stuttgart to winning the Bundesliga. Sigurvinsson developed in Westman islands on a small isolated island south of Iceland playing for IBV until he became 17 years old. The town of Westman islands only has around 4.200 inhabitants and is too remote to recruit youth players from elsewhere.

Hermann Hreidarsson developed at the same club, Hreidarsson played 15 seasons in English football and in 2011 he became the Scandinavian player who has played most matches in the history of the English Premier League.

On the female side, Margret Lara Vidarsdottir also grew up in the town, she is Iceland´s best goalscorer ever and has scored 71 goals in 94 matches for the Icelandic women´s national team. Not many players in the world can say they have a goalscoring record like that!

Think about how crazy this is… 4.200 inhabitants means that the whole town only has around 35-50 people born in a certain year, and only a part of them become football players and since the club is based on a small island they are stuck with that extremely small player pool to select from. They have to develop what they have got, they cannot recruit from elsewhere, they don´t recruit for talent. The lesson to learn here for player development is that you can develop good young promising players anywhere. I can name you at least 10 more players who have become professional players abroad coming from this small club.

Many of Iceland´s best players have developed in small clubs from the countryside. Have a look at another small club in Iceland IA Akranes who are a town of 6.000 people who have sold 30 homegrown players to bigger professional clubs abroad in 30 years. They do not recruit talented young players from elsewhere, they work with what they have got.

[Officer Barbrady]

So.....

Performance director closer than ever?

 

 

[Gordopolis]

Austin McPhee by the looks of it

[Officer Barbrady]

Baldy lawyer aff the telly??

 

 

I jest. That's the Lafferty fucker who sold my last house. What's his credentials?

[Moo]

Austin McPhee by the looks of it

I'd never really heard of him until 'the only Scotsman at the euros' was branded about (although false as gollum was there) so I've kind of taken a notice of him since. Seems to have done a really decent job going by how much the Mexicans and N.Irish rate him and seems to have played a major part in N.Irelands success recently.

[Gordopolis]

I'd never heard of him either but he's getting some write up now. He absolutely doesn't look like a football person - that Barnet! - but his credentials sound very apt.
I'd prefer a left field appointment like this to a malky Mackay one (tho I reckon Mackay might be a decent short term manager for the current side).

[Gordopolis]

Here's said Barnet

[Monkey Tennis]

1 hour ago, Moo said:

 

I'd never really heard of him until 'the only Scotsman at the euros' was branded about (although false as gollum was there) so I've kind of taken a notice of him since. Seems to have done a really decent job going by how much the Mexicans and N.Irish rate him and seems to have played a major part in N.Irelands success recently.

 

Yes, same here.

He had a bit of a profile at the Euros.  I remember reading stuff about him and seeing him interviewed in a TV feature.  He sounded quite impressive.

[Officer Barbrady]

On closer inspection, he seems to be quite the success story when left to his own devices......not many managers would gladly point to others as developing succesful tactics like O'Neill did. Quite the antithesis of the current SFA regime's MO, however....they much prefer old duffers full of wind and pish, spewing forth about five and ten year plans. 

[HibeeJibee]

Today's Scotsman says McPhee will turn down the SFA Performance Director position to become assistant to Cathro at Hearts.

[Rabinho]

Today's Scotsman says McPhee will turn down the SFA Performance Director position to become assistant to Cathro at Hearts.

I'd like to see that as Scotlands next management team.

[Peppino Impastato]

Yeah me too, they could be fantastic. 

[Gordopolis]

Quite disappointed that McPhee has gone to Hearts. Maybe getting carried away with Tom English's rhetoric, but he sounded like the perfect detached (from the usual Scottish football preconceptions), rational and shrewd mind we needed at the sfa.
Makes me wonder what Levein said to him about the sfa in the hearts interview.

ETA:if we end up with Malky Mackay as performance director, it's hard to imagine a more polarised alternative in terms of progressiveness (in most senses of the word)

[dogmc]

Quite disappointed that McPhee has gone to Hearts. Maybe getting carried away with Tom English's rhetoric, but he sounded like the perfect detached (from the usual Scottish football preconceptions), rational and shrewd mind we needed at the sfa.

Makes me wonder what Levein said to him about the sfa in the hearts interview.

ETA:if we end up with Malky Mackay as performance director, it's hard to imagine a more polarised alternative in terms of progressiveness (in most senses of the word)

It's fucked til we are rid if regan n cockwomble

[pub car king]

Can't blame him going to the jambos joining up with a young manager at an ambitious well run club that wants to go places and build a secure future.

Really the opposite of the sfa 

 

[bordersred19]

Sums up my thoughts on the potential appointment of Mackay.

http://auchterarderchippy.com/2016/12/12/the-sfa-is-in-another-galaxy-if-it-wants-to-go-the-malky-way/