CELTIC are failing their young stars at the moment and they must act now to ensure this current crop of young talent don’t fade away into obscurity.
Ewan Henderson and Karamoko Dembele come straight to mind when I look at the current crop of players who are too good for developmental but can’t get a look in because of the enormity of this season.
Many Celts have been loaned out to clubs this term, however, the ilk of the loan moves can be questioned. Afolabi at Dundee, Lee O’Connor at Tranmere, Scott Robertson at Gillingham to name a few.
The current way in which we develop players is all over the place. The pandemic hasn’t helped but these young kids have had very little room to develop over the past two or three seasons. Celtic’s withdrawal from the reserve league with no plan B has been a big issue.
The reserve league had its own problems but with the lack of competitive matches for the players is a big issue.
Ideally, if you can bring these young kids through who are used to playing with one another, it will only benefit the first team. Right now, it at least appears as if Celtic send their youngsters out on loan to any club who will take them and maybe one in a dozen will end up getting a first team game.
It’s not the way to do things and it’s how we are losing young stars to the likes of Manchester City and Bayern Munich. A re-think and a new way forward is needed or we’ll see Dembele move on before we’ve even got a chance to see what he can do.
If we want to bring another Kieran Tierney, Callum McGregor and James Forrest through we need to make sure we’re giving them the best chance to succeed.
A mixture of competitive matches and the RIGHT loan move and we could be back in business.
The development or lack of it for young footballers in Scotland is a disgrace, in Celtic’s case we even sign young players for decent money who can’t get a game, Turnbull and Soro are two examples this season. In my opinion clubs who can afford development squads should be allowed to enter the lower leagues, this would aid the football education of young Scottish players in the same way being farmed out to Junior clubs in the past helped Billy McNeill, Jimmy Johnstone, Bertie Auld etc to hone their skills and toughen them up. Why the clubs in the lower divisions keep stymieing this proposal puzzles me as it would add to their gates and increase revenue, as regards the question of promotion and relegation I would propose that the highest league these development teams could reach would be the 1st division. Sadly with the lack of imagination within the SPFL and the SFA It probably won’t happen anytime soon.
It is a game for our top players this season there is no more room for Error and the way things are we could lose another 2 games to them wake the fuck up…