SFA and Uncle Roy carving up the Elite Youth set up

[7-2]

Why on earth would the SFA pay any attention to an English 2nd Division team sitting 3 points above the relegation places? Ah, of course...

[RandomGuy.]

One thing about youth teams is how do you measure success? We've had poor results for years in the under 20s / development league but if we produce one or two first team players does it matter?

Also, I know it was a few pages ago, but a draft system has zero chance of working in Scottish football for lots and lots of reasons.

Quality of player produced is the only way, surely. Results are pointless when teams can stick over-agers in, while the best prospects will end up loaned out.

[ICTChris]

Why on earth would the SFA pay any attention to an English 2nd Division team sitting 3 points above the relegation places? Ah, of course...

Brentford are an interesting club, they are employing different methods to try and succeed. Worth keeping an eye on.

[7-2]

46 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Brentford are an interesting club, they are employing different methods to try and succeed. Worth keeping an eye on.

 

They were doing just fine when Warburton was manager and they used traditional methods. Since changing to new principles they appear to have gone backwards and are, as mentioned, sitting 3 points above a relegation place. They're now trying something else new. That's not good enough for a national organisation. Wait and see what happens with their latest toy and if it works they can be listened to. 

[Desp]

Of course, it comes from someone with Claret & Amber tinted specs on, but does he have a point?

Quote

Exclusive: Motherwell CEO Alan Burrows on the provincial pitfalls of Project Brave

ALAN BURROWS didn’t need to look far to find some ammunition for his argument while making an ascent up the steps to Hampden’s main entrance.

 

On his way to a Scottish Football Association meeting called to outline the proposed Project Brave back in October, a plan that is suggested to have Motherwell missing out on the Elite youth programme, the Motherwell chief executive was stopped dead in his tracks as his gaze was diverted to a large picture above his head.

 

“The day we went into Hampden to have this meeting, there was a big billboard outside stadium that caught my eye,” he explains to me, a look of incredulity still embossed on his face.

 

“It was of Faddy’s goal in France [James McFadden’s winner in the 1-0 victory over France in a Euro 2008 qualifier]. It was the aftermath of his wonder strike and the three players in the picture were Faddy, Lee McCulloch and Stephen Pearson.

 

“I thought to myself ‘I’m going to a meeting to get told that we are potentially getting locked out of this academy programme and there’s a big picture at Hampden on the SFA wall of three boys whose one thing in common is that they all came through the youth set up at Motherwell’.

“The guy who scored the goal in one of Scotland’s greatest victories in the last 20 years came from Motherwell. The two that celebrated with him first came from Motherwell. A quarter of the team that beat France in Paris came from Motherwell, yet we’re then getting told we’re not getting told we’re not good enough to be at the elite level of Scottish football.”

 

The fact you probably didn’t need an explanation on top of ‘Faddy’s goal in France’ to know what strike Burrows was referring to also proves a point.

 

Details emerged back in November of the Project Brave blueprint that includes the creation a two-tiered youth set-up, with an eight-team elite league to help cultivate future Scotland internationalists. It is believed cl6ubs such as Motherwell, Dundee United, Partick Thistle and Dundee would be excluded.

Understandably, it is a proposal that doesn’t sit well with those on the wrong end of the divide, particularly Motherwell given their past, present and their future.

 

“Off the top of my head, in the last 15 years we’ve had James McFadden, Stephen Pearson, Stevie Hammell, David Clarkson, Lee McCulloch. Mark Reynold and Jamie Murphy were also in the squads. Even Steven Saunders,” said Burrows. “There are umpteen examples of us producing young players for the international level, which is the SFA’s raison d’etre.

 

“All the clubs want to produce good young players, that’s obvious. However, some need to produce good young players, and that’s where the difference is and this is where I get emotional and personal with this.

 

“Given a model that doesn’t revolve around a benefactor, the onus is on the club to recruit good players to sell them and more so to cultivate your own players for the first team and then to trade them on for full value when the time is right. That is the only viable technique this club has going forward.

 

“Would it put Motherwell off a cliff to be excluded? If we are not allowed to develop players in the way we would, if we are not allowed to try and compete for the best players in the area, if we can’t get the best players through our youth system into the first team with a view to sell them then it presents a real clear danger to this football club, yes.

 

“Jim McMahon, the chairman, said at the last AGM that it’s the biggest existential threat to the club at the moment. That’s how serious it would be.”

 

Given the conveyor belt of talent that has trundled through the Fir Park factory over the last two decades it’s clear to understand the frustration. That feeling is only added to when it’s pointed out one of only two players to have graduated all the way through one of the SFA’s performance schools is at Motherwell - Jake Hastie - while the player to score both goals in Scotland’s Victory Shield draw with Wales back in November was Jamie Semple, the Motherwell U17 and U20 forward.

 

However, Burrows’ argues vociferously that while his loyalties are clearly seen through the prism of claret and amber tinted spectacles, his concerns are founded in objectivity and a desire to bring attention to the glaring problem in plans to fix the youth set-up of our game.

He said: “Even if we were one of the eight, though, I’d still have grave reservations over this. It wouldn’t be fair to the likes of Thistle or Killie if they could prove they could make it. I promise you that wouldn’t be the case. It’s not right, and when it’s not right the onus is on people to say there are ideas that are good but there are things that are fundamentally wrong in it. That includes setting an arbitrary number of clubs.

“Stewart Regan [the SFA chief executive] said there was an openness and willingness to expand it. That told me a key point. If there was some sort of independent advice or expert opinion that suggested that was the optimum number, then at least you could say it was based on something.

 

“But what Stewart said suggested the number is completely plucked from the air.”

Naturally the focus on youth football has seen the spotlight switched to just that, players in their early teens and younger and how they can be nurtured from children into the next Scottish national team superstar.

 

Yet, in a project with the word brave stuck on the end, it is a perceived reluctance do so at club level that Burrows believes is deserving of attention.

 

“We are delving deep into youth football, but there are a couple of fundamentals we are missing. Not enough young players are getting enough first-team football at any early age. Look at Chris Cadden here. Chris was on the verge of the 2015 summer of going out on loan to Albion Rovers or Dunfermline. You could probably say he wasn’t massively in the plans.

 

“Mark McGhee came in just over a month later and very quickly Chris found himself in the first team and signing a new contract. He then signed another one, got into the Scotland U21s and is now considered one of the best young players in the country.

 

“That’s down to his own drive to be better, but what you can’t ignore is that Chris Cadden is a better player because Chris Cadden is playing every week while learning the game.

 

“Are young players not playing because they are not good enough, or is it that the structure in Scotland isn’t conducive to young players thrown in at the deep end? The league is so tight in the Premiership so because of the cut-throat nature I don’t think it lends itself to allow managers to take a risk by putting young players in.

 

“It takes a brave manager or a certain circumstances. You have to look at the size of the league, you have to look at the differences between the top league and the second league [financially] so much so half the clubs are terrified of going down. You don’t gamble as much as you just want to make sure you stay in this division.

 

“If you can somehow lessen the fall between the two top flights to make the major disadvantage sporting rather than financial, you create an environment where managers will be more likely to put 17-21-year-olds into the first-team right away if they think they are good enough.

“If we are looking at youth football in Scotland, it can’t be done in isolation. You have to look at the bigger picture.”

 

[Swello]

Not much there to argue with in my opinion. What I will say is that the timing of this Project Brave (yeuch) stuff from a Motherwell point of view is terrible - under Leeann Dempster/Stuart McCall, the club prioritised the 1st team to the exclusion of everything else and the runners up spots and european qualifications masked the utter short-termism of that approach and the fact that the youth setup was next to pointless.

Now, ironically, when the club has (sensibly) reverted to a model where there is a clear path for academy players to get into the 1st team and just as that is beginning to bear fruit, the rug looks like getting whipped away by the 8 team setup.  I think Alan Burrows makes the point pretty eloquently, as he always does - but I can't help but think that, in common with most "consultations", that decisions have been made already about the setup and everything else is aimed at giving it a veneer of accountability. One other semi-interesting thing that this exercise shows is that the Tayside clubs have a bit of an influence problem at Hampden given their seeming lack of involvement in the plans or the talks.

If the intention of the elite academy plan was really to develop the most promising players from each area in order to provide better players for the national team, then there wouldn't be 2 academies in Glasgow or 2 in Edinburgh (or anywhere else). There would be 8 centrally funded regional academies that operate in partnership with the (full-time?) clubs in that region in order to provide a pathway to first team football.

The current lopsided plan that seemingly and bizarrely excludes Tayside and Fife all together, whilst disenfranchising clubs that have a decent historical record of player development, smacks of the type of back-room deal that we've seen time and time again over the years in Scottish Football.

[shootingboots]

Given Aberdeen's geographical location you'd have to say they should be included but the record for developing young players is atrocious compared to Motherwell. 

[Staggie52]

What I find difficult with this is that we see fans coming up with alternatives to the proposals but I haven't yet seen anyone from the clubs coming up,with anything apart from not liking the number of clubs involved. This latest one just seems to say we need to look at making dropping to the championship less scary. Personally I can't see that putting money into that would be any real incentive for clubs to bring through young players.

If bringing young players into first teams is the answer then there has to be real incentives for teams to do it and that's probably a quota system. Unless we've more money than they tell us I can't see a quota system being popular with the clubs.

[thisGRAEME]

Quote

“Stewart Regan [the SFA chief executive] said there was an openness and willingness to expand it. That told me a key point. If there was some sort of independent advice or expert opinion that suggested that was the optimum number, then at least you could say it was based on something.

 

“But what Stewart said suggested the number is completely plucked from the air.

[stillresigned]

Utterly Abysmal Idea. 

Wouldn't disagree at all!

[Staggie52]

And your solution is?

[Cerberus]

13 minutes ago, Staggie52 said:

And your solution is?

Not doing it.

[capt_oats]

Not much there to argue with in my opinion. What I will say is that the timing of this Project Brave (yeuch) stuff from a Motherwell point of view is terrible - under Leeann Dempster/Stuart McCall, the club prioritised the 1st team to the exclusion of everything else and the runners up spots and european qualifications masked the utter short-termism of that approach and the fact that the youth setup was next to pointless.

That actually highlights the issue almost in a nutshell. It has taken a change of ownership, management and a complete restructuring of the business model at the club along with a refocusing of aims and objectives to make youth development a priority at Motherwell.

You can restructure the youth leagues and have as many papers and think tanks as you like but if managers and clubs themselves at boardroom level don't make it a priority then, it won't be. You could argue that Aberdeen presently find themselves in a similar position under McInnes as MFC did under McCall/Dempster (without the 6 figure losses) and that's fine, if bringing through youth players isn't part of McInnes' remit then that's between him and his board. The same goes for any other manager. How individual managers run their sides is their prerogative.

Hearts on the other hand seem to have made the progression of players from their academy to first team a key part of what they're about with the likes of Hamilton, Paterson, Walker, Nicholson et al being part of their side. That is of course the irony. The point at which the SFA are floating their 'radical' plans for youth development is exactly when clubs, off their own back, are making youth development integral to their business strategy. Even Rodgers at Celtic has gone on record as saying he sees that as being part of his remit.

I get the feeling that Alan Burrows was hinting at league expansion rather than simply suggesting that the gap should be bridged financially between Premiership and Championship. Even then, is there any guarantee that having a 16, 18 or 20 team league would mean managers would be more inclined to give u21s a game? Probably not. For any change to be effective then it has to come at boardroom level.

Burrows makes his case clearly and he does a good job highlighting the ridiculousness of the proposal; the idea that clubs who have a track records in youth development and who are actively implementing programmes that the SFA seem to want to promote are likely to be excluded due to a completely arbitrary notion is ludicrous. It's telling that he seems to imply that there is little evidence or data to back up the proposal and that Reagan has essentially just gone with it. thisGRAEME's gif above seems to sum up the SFA position perfectly.

[thisGRAEME]

14 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

I get the feeling that Alan Burrows was hinting at league expansion rather than simply suggesting that the gap should be bridged financially between Premiership and Championship. Even then, is there any guarantee that having a 16, 18 or 20 team league would mean managers would be more inclined to give u21s a game? Probably not. For any change to be effective then it has to come at boardroom level.

I see his point here, with league expansion, and the idea that less danger of getting relegated would equate to less risk in giving younger players a chance, but surely expanding the league would make the drop off between a bigger premiership and championship something like this:

Looking at it practically, a 16/18 team league would be:

1. Celtic
2. Rangers
3. Aberdeen
4. Hearts
5. St Johnstone
6. Ross County
7. Partick Thistle
8. Dundee
9. Motherwell
10. Kilmarnock
11. Hamilton
12. Inverness
13. Hibernian
14. Dundee United
15. Morton
16. Falkirk
17. Raith
18. Dunfermline

(Simply looking at it from the basis of the current league positions, rather than who could/'should' be in it or whatever.)

Now, Burrows highlights:

Quote

“It takes a brave manager or a certain circumstances. You have to look at the size of the league, you have to look at the differences between the top league and the second league [financially] so much so half the clubs are terrified of going down. You don’t gamble as much as you just want to make sure you stay in this division.

 

“If you can somehow lessen the fall between the two top flights to make the major disadvantage sporting rather than financial, you create an environment where managers will be more likely to put 17-21-year-olds into the first-team right away if they think they are good enough

So if you got relegated from the giant league, surely the financial penalty for relegation there would be absolutely colossal? Again, with respect to the clubs that would make up the lower league here, how are you going to try and negotiate a TV deal for the wee Rovers v Dumbarton? Are clubs in this bigger league going to be distributing their money equitably among clubs in the lower divisions (LOL), or is it going to effectively end up a closed shop, with clubs who go down either risking it and investing in coming straight back up, or will the gap widen even further than it is just now and they'll just scud everyone there?

Surely, given how the last few years have gone, there's a more comprehensive argument for shrinking the leagues, as opposed to expanding them? Having two divisions chock-full of clubs competing with one another on a more level field (Adding QOS and Dumbarton to the list above), you've got two leagues of ten where the championship, in particular, would be wide open on the first day of the season? A top flight where you can go from 12th to 4th with a single win? Having these two as a 'product' to sell the Scottish game and bring more money in, better TV deals and more fans (helpfully, with Hibs and United selling out tonight highlights, again, that fans will turn out if there is something to play for). This, ideally, closes the gap between the two divisions financially, and means that going down, while not exactly something you're hoping for, doesn't mean you're going to have to sell the family silver just to stay alive as a club?

[Crilly]

1 hour ago, capt_oats said:

you can restructure the youth leagues and have as many papers and think tanks as you like but if managers and clubs themselves at boardroom level don't make it a priority then, it won't be.

Thats it in a nutshell.  

[Swello]

1 hour ago, capt_oats said:

I get the feeling that Alan Burrows was hinting at league expansion rather than simply suggesting that the gap should be bridged financially between Premiership and Championship. Even then, is there any guarantee that having a 16, 18 or 20 team league would mean managers would be more inclined to give u21s a game? Probably not. For any change to be effective then it has to come at boardroom level.

I took that comment more at face value - I thought he was simply meaning that the "risk" of playing more young players needs to be offset by better parachute payments in the event that you end up going down (maybe 'Flow needs to use his dormant account on here to answer ).

On that part, I don't see the risk of playing young players as being as high as it used to be - especially as more/most clubs are doing it. When everyone was overspending and there were better players in the league, then the gap between U20s and Senior Pro's was higher (as we found out in our admin season when we finished bottom). But now? Would anyone really argue that a stand out player in the U20's would do a worse job stepping up to the 1st team than a Tony Straker or Jake Taylor-type journeyman coming from the lowest levels in England? I would almost argue that playing someone who you've watched day in, day out for a few years and who is already settled at the club is lower (assuming you've got a core of good senior pros already) than going for someone picked out by a scouting app on a laptop.

[thisGRAEME]

20 minutes ago, Crilly said:

Thats it in a nutshell.  

Fully in agreement, on that front as well. It's also worth highlighting the fact that we're working much harder at making sure our youth players are more physically ready to play at a higher level. 

The club has placed a lot of stock in analysing their fitness, and certainly having watched them, for better or worse in terms of ability, they've certainly not looked out of place in a physical sense. We're certainly not seeing Ross Forbes style breathing out their arse after an hour. That's a club level decision to invest in fitness preparation, and the required equipment and expertise to ensure that they are capable. 

[Ya Bezzer!]

You know when, from time to time, you think "I'm glad I lived in this era just so I could experience this".  Whatever 'this' might be.

Stewart Regan makes me feel the opposite of that.  

The guy is a complete impostor who couldn't make a good decision as an anomaly.  Get him to f**k.  It's an absolute embarrassment he's still in position after an almost endless catalogue of imbecilic gaffs.

The last three decisions made by the SFA to improve youth football was to appoint a mumbling fuckwit, replace him with a disgraced racist twat and put a failed brontosaurus in charge of the U21s.

If the next SFA directive on youth football was to break the ankles of every newborn male child in the country it'd still be better than whatever plan these utterly vacuum skulled nitwits are coming up with.

Nothing gets better, nothing, until we flamethrower the SFA offices out like a machine gun bunker on fucking Omaha Beach.

 

 

[HibeeJibee]

AFAICS, there isn't a snowball's chance of clubs voting in a 16-18 team Premiership in order to create a bigger mid-table and meaningless games in the theory it helps blood youths. Quite justifiably, many would say.

You could make an argument that the financial and competitive impact would more than outweigh whatever improvement that theory realised, anyway.


Indeed, if anything the preference of the SFA and Regan and Doncaster in recent times has been the opposite.

Abortive attempt to force 10-team SPL through was put forward as focusing "best v best".

Also had the abortive 12-12 / 8-8-8 idea which made things even more cut-throat and effectively had an 8-team Premiership for half the season.

[Dindeleux]

AFAICS, there isn't a snowball's chance of clubs voting in a 16-18 team Premiership in order to create a bigger mid-table and meaningless games in the theory it helps blood youths.

Whilst I'm sure you are right and clubs won't vote it in I can't for a minute understand the thinking behind the term "meaningless games". I don't really think any competitive league game supporting your club could be classed as meaningless to a fan due to the crazy passion most people have for their clubs.