An excellent article by Eddie Murray on The Celtic Star yesterday morning on Celtic’s development and absolutely spot on too. You can read Eddie’s article below before I have my say.
READ THIS…Celtic’s homegrown problem – who’s next after Calmac and Jamesy?
The B league is a glorified Junior division and we are, as Eddie says, asking the B team to be playing Bo’ness or Cowdenbeath B before playing Lazio or Madrid young teams in the shadow CL tournament. And bear in mind our B Team is currently 10th of 18 teams – 19 points off the leaders – who are currently East Kilbride! Even theRangers have binned it. What is the point of us being in it?
As for our Academy system, the website boasts that since 2000 there have been 51 who have made the first team – but when you also look at their success stories list nothing after Calmac /Jamsie and listing O Dea, McManus and McGeady – how long ago was that? Apparently 41 of them have become professionals somewhere!
Presumably that includes all the McGowans, Moffats, McGlincheys , Irvines, Dembeles etc playing in lower leagues. I wonder how much we all pay for an army of well kitted out Celtic coaches at all the age groups? Then go buy an unknown left back from Argentina or a wonder-kid winger – from Australia.
The pertinent question might be why the entire Celtic Academy and coaching system across Scotland has failed to find a competent left back since Tierney? That said the issue is largely in the laps of the Scottish football administration and its mad system of leagues and associations. Why would a promising youngster hang about our academy getting the odd friendly here and there and maybe occasional promotion into the B team for a crack at Linlithgow Rose?
If Brendan Rodgers is looking for talent coming through, and doesn’t see any, then the noble McManus and O’Dea and colleagues should be in his office explaining why they and/or others have failed to deliver that – might not even be their fault but someone should be asking.
I assume a lot of money goes into development – according to the AGM annual report there are 182 players and administration staff employed in the group. The report provides a list of Key Performance Indicators – youth development is not monitored – even though one KPI is player trading – often the lucrative end product of delivering a young player into the first team and transfer attention.
As someone asked at the AGM this week surely managers at an organisation like Celtic have annual targets to meet or face being marked down or worse? If the answer is that the league set up in Scotland isn’t allowing this progression then a big club like ours – and our pals across the river for another one – should be asking why and pushing through change – assuming they can get past the votes of the chairmen of Alloa, Cove Rangers and the like!
Martin Leadbetter
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Hey Editor ! I wrote that !! 😄🍀🍀
Well bugger off then you’d aren’t wanted in the lowland league and below either
Yes, your name is on it Martin!