Ending in Tiers
Scottish football's propose structure changes - but is impatience or ignorance the bigger issue?
Before football in the UK went all weird for a weekend because Gary Lineker dared to point out that the government’s language towards some of the most marginalised people in the world is more reminiscent of Oswald Mosley than of the modern, compassionate democracy the country claims to be, Scottish football had its own paroxysm over Colts sides as detail came out of a new addition to the league structure that aims to crowbar in reserve sides into the league once more.
That proposal, along with a couple of others, is being considered as part of an update to the lower reaches of the league system but the thread amongst all these proposals appears to be for the SFA/SPFL to find a way to get more Colts sides into the Scottish League system while also being below the threshold of democracy to require certain voting requirements. They are happy to make controversial changes, happy to be called out on it but rather less happy for there to be all that much choice about it.
From Colts to B Teams
Colts are a hard sell in Scotland but it’s fair to note that they aren’t a hard sell everywhere. As a Scottish person who covers South East European football, I’ve seen a wide range of proposals and written about the region’s attitude to youth development before but it’s worth stating the history of Colts in the Scottish set up before pointing out why the current system doesn’t work.
In the 2016-17 season, Colts sides (Initially Under 20s but later Under 21s) were added into the Challenge Cup, Scotland’s lower league only trophy which, at the same time, added random sides from Northern Ireland, Wales and (later on) the Republic of Ireland and England. In the editions since, these Colts sides have made one semi-final and two quarter-finals from the 72 total entries from Colts sides across their time in the competition.
At the start of 2021/22, Celtic and Rangers’ Colts sides (officially Celtic B and Rangers B) were added to the Lowland League, the fifth tier of Scottish football with Hearts B also being added to the Lowland League at the start of 22/23. Each parent club pays a fee to the rest of the league as permission to play there and all are ineligible for either promotion or relegation. In their first season in the league, Celtic B and Rangers B finished tied on points for second well behind Bonnyrigg Rose at the top. As things stand, the two are currently in the top two slots in the Lowland League this season, albeit in a tight battle with Spartans, Tranent and Stirling Uni for first while Hearts sit in the bottom half, but with a couple of games in hand on everyone. No B teams currently play in the Highland League.
A Question of Progress
As things stand, with all that stated, a few questions jump out pretty quickly
Is under two full seasons long enough to judge the success or otherwise of B teams?
Regardless of the answer to that, is now really the time to go changing things?
Are B teams working? If not, why not?
What are the objections to B teams?
And finally…
What is the actual end goal here?
A Personal Statement
Just to put on record before I go into any of this, I am not opposed to B teams from some sort of values-based judgement. I follow and write on leagues where B teams are included, where they aren’t and where more unofficial systems exist and can give you a fairly solid reasoning as to why each suits the footballing eco-system they inhabit. What those eco-systems are not, however, is completely an apples-to-apples comparison to Scotland so some of the things I mention going forward will be very much in contrast to the Scottish system. Anyway, to start with the last question first…
What is the actual end goal here?
There are multiple reasons that B teams or things analogous to them exist but we can broadly gather them into two categories - to either provide more talent for elite clubs or to provide more options for all clubs.
An example of the elitist approach would be what we see in Serbia where Crvena Zvezda have an official affiliate in the second tier in Graficar and have recently opened relations (although they’ll be at pains to tell you they don’t have anything to do with it) with the Romanticari of OFK Belgrade in the regional leagues. Partizan have a similar link with third tier Teleoptik who serve as their Graficar. Players will go from youth teams either straight to the first team of the main club or to the appropriate farm club while both clubs (but Zvezda mainly) also go shopping in the domestic market to hoover up talent that have come through other academies. This is probably most similar to what the Scottish system is perceived to be because of who is in it.
An example of the broader based approach would be the previous Croatian system (which was done away with league reform ahead of the current season) where three or four clubs had second sides in the second tier (most recently, Hajduk, Osijek and Dinamo but Rijeka had this previously also) but where there were steps between them and the first teams through either loans or more local informal arrangements, such as Dinamo’s relationship with Lokomotiva. While it’s immediately worth pointing out that this exact system now no longer exists, the league reform has moved the third tier to a national league rather than regional tiers and Osijek still place a second side in the third tier. Again, if you would like a deep dive into the Croatian system of youth development, the link to that is earlier in this article but the point remains that this is a refinement of the previous system rather than chucking second teams entirely in the bin. This is probably most similar to what the Scottish system actually wants to be.
Is under two full seasons long enough to judge the success or otherwise of B teams?
No. No, it’s not.
When talking about the introduction of Celtic and Rangers B teams in 2021, Lowland League Chair, George Fraser, stated:
It was absolutely clear to me that there is a major gap in the player pathway which would, if not addressed, impact a generation of our best young talent.
From the Lowland League’s presentation to clubs to sell it, they went further, stating this gap in the player pathway was specifically between 17 and 21 with B teams to create positive player development options from players in this transitional phase between the Under 18s league and the first team.
As such, it’s important to note straight away that the suggestion is that the solution addressing this gap in the player pathway - a pathway designated as a four year spell - is being ditched after two years. Going further, the maximum age for players was to turn 20 in the year the season ends (so someone born in 2003 can play this season but not next) with an exclusion for one 21 year old outfield player and one 21 year old goalkeeper with the majority of the squad being Scottish.
One and a half seasons has apparently been enough to tell people that that solution hasn’t worked.
Regardless, is now really the time to go changing things?
This, therefore, begs the question as to why now and I think there are a few reasons as to why.
The first element is to do with the initial impact of the opening of the trapdoor to the Highland and Lowland Leagues. After seeing Kelty Hearts and Cove Rangers all throw money at building their squads to reach League Two and move into the higher tiers quickly, Bonnyrigg Rose have become the first promoted side to properly struggle with the step up to league football and, to follow, this has become the first season in many where the Lowland League hasn’t had clubs pull away at the top. In short, the competitive sides that B teams were playing against last season have gone and what is left are, in general, sides who are in Tier 5 of Scottish football because that is naturally their place in the food chain.
Secondly, just take a look at how many players Celtic have out on loan who are 21 or under - Adam Montgomery, Liam Shaw and Johnny Kenny all on loan. For Rangers, that’s three loans in Zukowski, Williamson and Josh McPake. For Hearts, it’s Connor Smith and Scott McGill. These aren’t necessarily all players the clubs involved would keep long term or who would develop into first team players, but that these are all going to clubs higher than the Lowland League show that, clearly, there is a recognition at the clubs that the B teams aren’t the right development environment for these players. That many of these have gone to the Championship as well is a pretty obvious sign that there is a step missing in player development. To toot my own horn for a moment, that’s something I have stated since the beginning - that the B teams project wouldn’t work because the development model thought of has been built without any answers between B team and First team. Given that no-one would reasonably think that a player can just go from the Lowland League to the top flight in one go, it’s a massive failing of the initial system because the sort of player who could go from even League Two to the Premiership in one comfortable step is the like of Andy Robertson or, more recently (although to League Two in England), Owen Moxon. Players who couldn’t make that leap include the likes of Salim Kouider-Aissa, Faisal El-Bakhtaoui or, for a long period, Lawrence Shankland. All names that excelled in League One or below but the hit rate of players making the step up is hardly an impressive one.
With the new proposal looking to cap the progress of B teams to League One, this provides a more stable situation for the parent clubs - if we take the example of some of those loans from the three parent clubs this season, would they choose to send a player to a Hamilton or Raith if their B team were in League One? Is that gap from lower end of Championship and top end of League One really so great as to make a Championship loan the best option?
Finally, there is the pressure from below. The Lowland League’s expansion of the pyramid below them has brought the well supported Juniors into the system. The likes of Pollok and Auchinleck Talbot in the west and Linlithgow Rose in the East are well supported, established clubs who will be good tier five clubs and will likely eventually be tier four clubs. It is, bluntly, quite an opportune time for league reconstruction to be on the agenda given that there are two “problems” to fix in the development pathways and getting these upwardly mobile sides moving upwards and now is the right time to be tackling it before parent clubs start to think B teams aren’t worth the money and before the Lowland League starts filling up with big sides from the Juniors, etc that find their path upwards blocked by the current playoff system (as any new fifth tier would need a promotion/relegation system that has something automatic).
Are B teams working? If not, why not?
See above but it brings in two key points from earlier in this article - that there currently is a gulf between Lowland League and First Team and that we need to establish what the point of it all is. To do so, we need to look at why B teams fail.
Key in this is that B teams cost a lot of money. The current regulations require they have at least 22 professional players and at least 8 full time support staff. It doesn’t take a financial expert to work out that the B team staffing from a playing and support perspective it going to be costing Celtic, Rangers and Hearts potentially well over £500k per year to run (an amount which will only rise as the player pathways rise from 17-21 in age). In the nicest way possible, no club is going to be giving Hearts, Rangers or Celtic £500k for a player that is only tested against part time footballers. So what B teams tend to turn into is not simply an extension of a youth set up but an addition to a youth set up so that the club is putting out three very different sides with little crossover and there is little reason to think that the Scottish system will be any different to that as time goes on. However, it’s key to note that, unlike the other nations I can speak confidently on, Scotland gets £30m a season in TV money compared to, say, Croatia’s £10m. While far, far more affordable for Celtic than it is Dinamo Zagreb, it would still be facetious to describe it as loose change.
As such, B teams have to work and for them to work we have to establish what the point of them is because that is how we’re going to judge success. If we follow the elitist model from earlier (that it’s to produce the best players), then B teams have to add £500k in utility a season. Can they do that in the Lowland League? If not, then the side must either fold or the system around them must evolve.
If we follow the more broader based model from earlier, then B teams have to provide a steady flow of players throughout the league system. Of the players leaving B teams permanently this season, precisely one, Kyle McClelland, left for a club in Scotland (and that was to Hibs). If it’s not doing that, well it’s probably because we’re one and a half seasons into what must be a four season project at minimum but what we would look for then is not players who leave to go to Premiership clubs or, like with Celtic’s departures, to the likes of Cork City (or to go and play Premier League 2 football because it’s deemed a higher standard!), but players who go instead to the likes of Montrose or Clyde - players who parent clubs have seen enough of to judge as not making the first team but players who other clubs have seen enough of to give them a longer career in football.
Again, the question of how we are judging the success or otherwise of B teams comes to the fore as the great unanswerable.
What are the objections to B teams?
This, at least, is eminently answerable. Scotland is arguably unique in that it is bringing in B teams into a system that is inherently ancient in footballing terms. If I talk Croatia or Serbia then I invariably happen upon clubs that have gone to the wall. Scotland, in recent memory, have had two - Gretna, whose issues were around the sustainability of their business plan once their financial backing was pulled due to Brooks Mileson’s illness, and Clydebank, whose issues were long-standing and around their nomadic existence.
In the UK, we see that sort of thing and think never again because football clubs tend to be a century old and an indispensable part of a community. In other places, their reputations and the nature of their existence is far less revered and, therefore, B teams and things like that to bring the structure of football under the umbrella of some nebulous greater aim is a far easier sell. Yes, Stenhousemuir are nearly 140 years old and I’m sure the people at the club are lovely and do good things for the local area but how many players have they produced for Scotland? What is their direct value to the game in Scotland right now?
That’s a question we’re not meant to ask but it’s the one that the existence of the B teams ultimately forces upon us to try and put some sort of actual utility value on a football team. It’s a question you would get different answers to in different places also - where the existence of clubs is more fluctuating, the acceptance of B teams or similar is greater. In Scotland, it’s nil but that doesn’t mean the question itself shouldn’t be asked in the first place because it must feed in to the largest question of the lot.
So, what IS the actual end goal here?
Given we’re almost 3,000 words deep into this, it’s either a testament to my monumental lack of brevity or to the sheer awkwardness of the issue that this question still isn’t easy to answer in any meaningful way.
It is obvious that, right now, the B team system isn’t working as it should be from either an elitist or broad-based view. Some of that is time. More of it is structure. When B team and first teams work in harmony, the results don’t just mean better players at the top end, but better players all around. When Dinamo Zagreb’s seconds were wound up, where did their players go? Of those multitudes, nine went to other clubs in Croatia with another three going to neighbouring nations - they have been part of the B team, they have moved on to other clubs and their experiences in that B team have served to make them more prepared for first team football somewhere else, have served to give the players more of a chance at a good career and, as a whole, raised the standard of the game in Croatia. That’s a bold statement to make about players who moved on only in Summer 2022 but it’s a statement I can make because it’s what happened in each preceding summer while the system and extension of Dinamo’s production line existed. That structure works and the reason Croatia phased it out is because it worked well enough to not be needed any more - the standard of football was raised from the bottom up enough to mean the competitive deficit that existed before it had been eradicated.
This won’t work in Scotland with B teams playing in the Lowland League. That should have been obvious to everyone two years ago before embarking on the whole thing and the concept of attempting to Trojan Horse them into the system rather than to find a proper solution hasn’t exactly helped which leaves the larger clubs of Scotland and the SFA in a somewhat impossible situation - how do they thread the needle to find a middle ground where these young prospect can get game time of a high enough standard to make it worthwhile and to provide the missing rungs of the development ladder while also not seeing clubs vote it down and fans get beyond annoyed at it all?
To borrow a suggestion from the exceptionally dysfunctional world of Serbia, perhaps the best way to do so is to work the system with existing clubs - could Celtic work with Partick Thistle or Rangers with Morton or Hearts with Edinburgh City and so on on the basis that the child club is able to deal with the parent on an enhanced loan system or something similar (given FIFA are updating loan rules, this would likely be a more difficult ask than it really should be). That would thread the needle between ensuring youth development without pushing B teams up the ladder, albeit at the cost of the B teams essentially becoming C teams and therefore essentially redundant. Even that suggestion has other obvious pitfalls such as that it would naturally favour sides in larger areas and stack the deck against sides like Inverness CT, Queen of the South and even Ayr, who are geographically that little bit further away from Scotland’s major conurbations and footballing hubs and would therefore be competitively and financially disadvantaged by such a system (unless affiliations were rotated and done on a draft system but you start getting into the realm of the needlessly complicated at that point).
What is clear is that Scottish football has a problem (a development chasm between 17-22), that the current solution of B teams in Tier 5 hasn’t worked because it is seen as not competitive enough for clubs to put their best prospects into the B team for a season (a conclusion I wholly agree with) and that there isn’t an easy solution to that issue that makes people happy. Opening B teams to promotion to League One is, from a development perspective, far better than the current system but, quite rightly, no side in League One or League Two should be all that happy with the prospect of being bumped out of the way to allow it be that forcibly or competitively. Unlike other nations, Scotland also has a particularly avaricious neighbour in England who are scouting Scotland heavily and are incentivised by Brexit to shop in Scotland and bring players into their own development systems early - development systems so competitive that for all but the elite of the elite they end up as rather faceless operations that operate on an elitist basis because there is enough talent in the league system already that they don’t need to be broad based because that happens by default.
Scotland isn’t there yet. As things stand, the current B teams system probably won’t help that point be reached either because, with under 25 full time clubs in the nation, where are these B team players going to end up given that a Falkirk or a Dunfermline aren’t necessarily going to be pushing the boat out to bring in a 21 year old with 80 Lowland League appearances given they won’t be proven at League One level. Quite aside from the concept of making a system to produce more elite talent - something based as much around facilities, coaching, genetics, attitude and fortune as it is from centralised guidance - the whole aim of tackling the development gap has to be of raising the standard of football from the bottom up so that there are better players and so that a side that is put together of the lowest rung of full-time players is consistently better than a side of the highest rung of part-time players (sorry, Arbroath!). Doing that and raising the floor of the standard rather than the ceiling creates a virtuous cycle of development where those players will be contribute to a higher standard, develop at a higher standard and therefore reach a higher standard. There is little point in raising the ceiling of playing standard in Scotland if all you do is take it further out of reach of those looking to reach it.
Few people would deny Scotland has an obvious issue. The B teams have contributed part of a solution but it is very much an incomplete part in that we are aware what the end goal and the starting point of fixing the development chasm are - the middle steps are missing however. The question that is with Scotland’s administrators now is twofold:
What do those steps look like?
How can those steps be implemented with the least upheaval?
As the past 4,000 words probably show, those will not be easy questions to answer.