SENTINELCELTS

Morning, all.

Taking a wee sidetrack today before I get things back to a Celtic-related subject, but bear with me on this. We all know our academy isn’t bringing players through at the rate it should, and hasn’t been for some time. I remember reading an article from when Tommy Docherty was at Man Utd, and he said that he would ask the youth coaches about any bright prospects they had for him. He expected three per season to be able to make occasional appearances for the first team as they progressed towards a regular place. 

That was half a century ago, and I remember thinking even then that he was being perhaps a little optimistic. Under Jock Stein, our legendary manager who had made his name training our youths before being offered the Dunfermline job-and beating us in the cup final while he was there-we struggled to reach that. The days of The Quality Street Kids were gone, but we still saw youngsters being given a runout in the side before being given a rest back in their age group then being given a longer run, etc. 

A properly run academy should, however, be able to provide at least one player of first team quality every season. We are falling considerably short of that, and have been for some time. Unfortunately for the national side, as we saw in the World Cup, this failing is not unique to us. Sure, we can blame poor quality age level coaching, and probably with some justification. But not every youth coach at every club academy can be rank rotten, it isn’t statistically possible. Therefore there must be another reason. 

One such reason that has become the subject of increased discussion recently is political. Brexit. UK clubs can no longer poach youth academies in Europe for their brightest and best, and the work permits for players of any age from abroad have been tightened up considerably. This obviously limits the gene pool, and clubs have had to look elsewhere. If they can’t look to the outside world, they have to look back inwards again. To the rest of the UK. 

That’s why we read of players transferring from one club academy to another at ages like 13, 14, etc. This only used to happen when players were released by one club and snapped up by another. Declan Rice, for example, was released by Chelsea at that age. He thoughts his dreams were over until WHU snapped him up. He thought he was Irish too at the time, but that’s another story. The one I’m concerned with today is when richer clubs raid poorer clubs for their brightest and best against the wishes of the parent club. And that is happening too often now for it to be of benefit to the game, the players, or the original club.

Why would a club see the benefit of an academy, nurturing talent from around 9yo and subsidising their coaching through to say 15yo, when the chances are that a bigger club will snap them up if they show any promise? But the other side of the coin has to be considered too. Despite increasing squad sizes, football still only allows eleven players on the pitch at any given time. If a 16yo moves from, say, Morton to Middlesborough, will he have as great a chance of breaking through to first team football there as in Greenock? If he moves from Hibs to Fulham? Sure, his initial wages will be a lot higher. But his long term career prospects might have taken a nosedive. He might never be seen again. 

On the other hand, he might think that he will not only earn more but learn more at a richer club with better resources. That could mean being sufficiently highly regarded that a lesser club, say from EFL Div One, will splash out a six figure sum for him based only on his age relevant games. It’s a helluva risk, but one that an increasing number of Scottish players are willing to take. Over 100 so far, apparently. 

There are very few of those who can look back and say that they have succeeded. Ben Doak was the subject of a £20m move to Bournemouth, a price which he would hardly have commanded as a teenager had he stayed with Celtic. Billy Gilmour is a vital cog in a very successful Napoli side. One or two others are undoubtedly making a decent living, and probably at a higher level than was likely in Scotland. Most however have fallen through the cracks, and are pretty much lost to our game.

Those lost to the game, if you remember, were regarded as the brightest and best in their age group. Had they stayed at home they would probably have progressed to first team duties, where there is every chance that clubs like Aberdeen or Hibs or St Mirren would have been interested. From there, the world-these clubs are known across the continent as a source of potential, and at affordable prices. 

Unfortunately, Celtic, despite being the big cheese in Scotland, also lose their best talent down south. And if the money we allegedly are still paying Donovan and Murray is anything to go by, I’m not surprised. Sadly for those players with the exception of Doak, none of them has set the world on fire. None, in fact, can look back and say that the move was good for their career progression. But there is a fly in the ointment in that argument. Those players may not have progressed to the first team at their new club, but Celtic’s recent history suggests that they wouldn’t have made it here either. 

We tend to loan our youngsters elsewhere, then cut them adrift. Few come back with the improvement that was apparent in CalMac twelve years ago after a stint at Notts County. Fewer still are trusted and considered good enough by their manager, as he and Kieran Tierney were by Ronny Deila. Everyone could see we had a star in KT, but CalMac was hardly a universal selection every week as far as the fans were concerned. This despite a goal in his debut, his European debut and his league debut for example. 

How many since have come through and stayed there? Welsh was probably our only highlight in the covid season, and he  and Montgomery were regular starters under Ange-until he decided they weren’t. Ralston has played plenty and even earned a multitude of caps, but without ever being a first pick. Donovan and Murray will only play as replacements, and they know it. But with the latter two, I put that down to poor coaching at a development stage, and since. 

Celtic then are screwed in academy purposes for three reasons. Our best are cherrypicked by clubs from England and elsewhere, despite evidence that such moves rarely succeed. Our managers tend not to value our youths when they do pop up on the horizon, and prefer to bring someone in from outside. And thirdly, which probably explains the second point, their coaching in the youth groups hasn’t been good enough to have them ready for first team football. 

And so we are screwed for a fourth reason. There is no point in fixing any one of these problems unless we can fix all three at once. We need to convince players that their interests are best served with us than elsewhere. We need to convince the managers that our youths can be trusted. And we need to improve academy coaching so that players are ready for first team football. 

After that, all we have to do is convince the fans to support our youngsters, to let them learn without the undercurrent of disappointment or worse that accompanies every bad pass, every lost challenge, etc. We may pride ourselves in loving it when a youngster, one of our own, makes the breakthrough. Maybe we should give them the time to prove why they are there. 

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The other thing of note in Scottish football is the long overdue abolition of the Key Match Incidents panel. It was becoming increasingly obvious that these panels were calling incidents based on what team they support-or what team they don’t support! This meant that they were too often calling incidents  wrongly, with their determination bearing no resemblance to truth as decided by updated Laws Of The Game.

As such, they were consistently undermining the good work that has been done by Willie Collum since his appointment as Head Of Refereeing in Scotland. I watch his monthly précis of decisions and I don’t always agree with them. That’s because I would have been a prime candidate for membership of the KMI Panel, had I not kicked with the wrong foot! I try to call incidents as a football fan rather than a Celtic fan, I really do. But I’m the first to admit my occasional failing on this. 

The difference is that the DR and others don’t use my opinion on incidents to call out Willie Collum and the wider refereeing fraternity when they don’t like legitimate decisions against their favoured club. They frequently used the KMI Panel findings for this purpose though. Its abolition is, in my opinion, good for the game. Long overdue, amd one more dinosaur now extinct. The rest of the ingrained SFA prejudices however might take some time.

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Finally, I continue to wish Martin a speedy and thorough recovery, and  hope that he is feeling better. The Guardian has recently been running an occasional series of articles, My Feelgood Movie. One of mine has always been The Producers. You can’t really go far wrong with Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder when they are in full-on farce mode. Hard to believe you could have seen that around the same time Billy McNeill was scoring against Vojvodina!

Dunno why I thought of it yesterday, but Zero Mosel as Max Byalistok might have had something to do with it. Whichever of the Byalistoks Martin watched yesterday, I’m sure he went to sleep last night laughing as much as I was. It’s the best medicine, you know. 

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Above article by BMCUWP