Research and Development Department

SKY BLUE thinking they cal it. It's one of these modern managementspeak dollups of shite; dunno exactly what it means, but I think it's something to do with imagining nothing can go wrong.

Aye right, that sort of thinking cuts right across the Scottish mindset which is part of our DNA - that bit best summed-up by McEwan's Corollary.

What the fuck is McEwan's Corollary? You ask. Simples, it's the Scotsman's traditional response to Murphy's Law (If it can go wrong it will). McEwan's Corollary is "That fucking Murphy always was an optimist".

Sky blue thinking is being called for in response to the perceived failings of Scottish football in terms of youth development. It is common knowledge that our development of young players has been failing for years. Ask for reasons and you get as many excuses as there are boys playing in boys club teams: Xboxes and other computer games, television, fear of paedophiles, nervous mummies who will not let their little dears outside, the teachers' strike, the extra traffic which means you cannot play football in the street, and so on and so forth.

Then of course we have the "fact" that so many of our youth team coaches are psychopaths, who encourage their kids to kill, maim and generally kick their way to victory.

But, one of the most-honest appraisals of the ills of youth development in Scotland came from a guy who works exclusively within that area and is a member of the SFA's Council - the parliament of the game in this country.

He told me: "The talent is still there, good, well-run Scottish boys club teams go abroad to these big youth tournaments every year and return with trophies. Our Under-14 and Under-15 teams have just as many naturally-talented young players as any other country, but, within a year of going into the professional clubs' development systems, these same kids are going backwards at a rate of knots. The clubs spoil far more players than they bring through".

A damning indictment, from a man who knows his stuff, has set a couple of boys on their way to full caps and a lot more to decent careers in the seniors, but who is, within the SFA, marginalised onto a couple of minor committees. He has done his years at the coal face and I would submit, done more good for Scottish football than the likes of George Peat.

Up until the inauguration of the World Cup in 1930, Scotland was arguably the best international team in the world. OK, we had been playing the game longer than any other country, apart from England obviously; but up until then, we generally beat England, our only real rivals for the 'Best in the World' title. Then came the Uruguayans, the Brazilians, the Austrians, Hungarians and Italians, not forgetting the Germans.

By the time the Home Nations deigned to compete in the World Cup in 1950, we were by no means the best team in the world, but had we gone to Brazil, we might reasonably have expected to have finished in the top ten. Today, we are barely top 50.

Scotland in football terms is kinda like British Leyland before its demise; a once-great product, now living on past glories, weighed-down by a bloated front office management structure, lacking real imagination in the design and technology departments, churning-out products the world no longer wanted to buy. Where once Scotland was the shop in which the English clubs shopped for essentials, today it's a shop they rartely enter.

We sold our best products to our biggest competitor for years, we sent them our best brains - all those "Scotch professors" who were the early stars, then became the grat managers, right up to Shankly, Busby, Dalglish and Ferguson.

Today, our stock cupboard is bare. Can I say here by the way, if its people have long been Scotland's biggest and best export and if therefore, the brightest and best have generally hit the high road to England and further afield, it stands to reason that our remaining genes pool has to be a wee bit shallow these days.

We've got to spend more on research and development, of the worthy successors to McMullan, Jackson, Dunne, Gallacher, James, Steel, Liddell, Bobby Johnstone, Docherty, Brown, Mackay and White, Law, Leggat, Ure, Gilzean, Collins, Bremner, Lorimer, McQueen, Jordan, Bob Wilson's mum and dad, David Harvey's dad, Bruce Rioch's dad, Masson, Gemmill, Souness, Dalglish, Hartford, McLintock, Hutchison, Green, Moncur and the many other lesser-known Scots who went south and lit-up the English game.

We've got to go back to the passing game - what won Spain the World Cup was basic, old-fashioned Scottish football, whereby you passed your way to success. We've forgotten how to do this, as we roar: "Get ra baw up ra park son" at any kid today with the embryonic gallusness of the young Baxter. Any kid today who went off on a Jinky Johnstone run past six men, would be hauled off by his coach and harangued as "ya greedy wee bastard".

We've got to spend money on facilities, from within football. It's no good clubs paying foreign mercenaries relatively big bucks pleading poverty and seeking public money for indoor pitches, if they haven't come up with cash themselves, or a plan whereby the public might benefit from this facility.

Scottish football, allegedly, has an over-fixation with England; this is supposedly bad. But, they might be ten times our size, but since the days of William Wallace it is against England that Scotland has measured itself. They might be bigger, we are better, is the Scottish mindset.

In football, we have played England in 109 official internationals, or, if you like - one-day wars. We've won 41,they've won 44, there have been 24 draws; this gives us a wins ratio of 40%.

Pre-World War II we'd won 29 of the 63 games, lost 19 and there had been 15 draws, a Scottish wins ratio of 46%.

Post-World War II we've won just 12 of the 46 games, drawn 9 and lost 25, a 26% wins ratio. If you take the professional's measurement of percentage of points won at 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, overall we've won 45% of the available points against England. Pre-World War II that percentage was 54%, post-World War II is is 33%.

So, we've been failing for at least 65 years, but have never actually done anything about stemming this tide of failure.

Scottish football is broken - fix it. But can we?