Youth failings costing Old Firm

So the biggest transfer dealings of the summer in Scotland appear to involve Hearts and Hibs – Steven Fletcher’s £3m move to Burnley from Easter Road and the potential £4m move in the same direction for Hearts winger Andrew Driver. Considering that, between them, the two Edinburgh clubs appear to carry more debt than most third world countries, the income, added to that received in recent seasons by Hearts for Craig Gordon and Christophe Berra and by Hibs for Tony Mowbray’s “golden generation” – O’Connor, Riordan, Thomson, Brown, Whittaker et al – is pretty crucial. And all these players were academy products, so no transfer fee was ever spent on them. Lots and lots of profit then, enough to make Alastair Darling raise his silly eyebrows with glee.

Now, there’s Alan Hutton, who was crap for years and years, then for six months magically transformed into a world class right back so Spurs paid Rangers £9m for him, and since then has been injured more often than Jonny Wilkinson. Apart from him, who have either Rangers or Celtic managed to develop and sell for decent money?

It’s increasingly clear that there are only a few ways to raise a quality team if you do not play in one of the big leagues – sign lots of young foreign players on the cheap and sell them later (difficult in Scotland because of the work permit system) and develop your own players and sell some of them for good money later. Considering how much cash the Old Firm have supposedly spent on facilities for youth and training – did Murray Park not cost £10m? – the lack of output is staggering. Fine, in the 90s, a lot of damage was done with the buying of foreign players, but these were top guys, internationals. No wonder no-one except Barry Ferguson broke through (no, Charlie Miller and his pot belly doesn’t count). Now Rangers have Allan McGregor and Celtic have Aiden McGeady and Stephen McManus. But, realistically, they now need to be selling a top young guy for £5-10m every summer, or at least every second summer, in order to compete.

Now, I know they say that Edinburgh is distinctly classier than Glasgow, but how come Hibs and Hearts could pick up and develop the players listed above, while to the West the best they can come up with are the likes of Mark Burchill and Chris Burke?

Now the hopes of Rangers fans are all pinned on John Fleck as the next big thing. Will he go the way of Hutton, or of Burke, Bob Malcolm, Barry Nicholson and others? From past experience I know who I would put my money on.

L.