THERE are, apparently, no plans to lift the profile of the Scottish League Cup, even though it has now come under the control of the Premiership clubs, who, in case you haven't noticed, now run - God help us - Scottish football.
So, no European spot for whichever club wins it this season. Mind you, that will be no bad thing given the damage the under-performing diddy teams in Celtic's division, but not in their league, might do to Scotland's UEFA co-efficient.
Right, if the European carrot isn't going to be there in the short to medium term, how about the big stick. Our clubs keep paying lip service to "player development", and, for as long as the MSM in Scotland are going to refrain from saying: "Aye Right!!!" every time a club spokesman utters these meaningless words, this will continue.
We need to develop more and better young Scottish talent: so, why not bring back the "eight diddies" rule for the League Cup? This means, no club could have more than three non-Scots in each League Cup match-day squad. You never know, it might work.
And, while we are at it, why not restore the group stages, run the competition as a start of the season warm-up competition, which would further lift its profile.
Just a further thought, while I am being radical. Shouldn't we perhaps think of moving our season to perhaps the Scandinavian timetable; more summer games, a winter shut-down - it might get us more television time and better deals, when we weren't trying to compete with the English game. It would also have our clubs in better shape for the European campaign, given we will, for the forseeable future, have to start early with the other diddy countries.
PETER Lawell is a real smoothie, he also, I think, scares those hard men of the Scottish Football Writers Association shitless. So, when he sat down to write Celtic's sort of end of season report, which has gone out to the shareholders, he probably knew he would get pretty-much away with murder.
Lawell praises his club's development programme, fair enough, the Celtic youngsters are the best in Scotland, but, the question is - how many will get even a sniff of a first team slot this season?
The answer is - barring some catastrophic injuries, nil, zilch, narry a one. This is pretty much a slap in the face to the countless janitors and teachers across Scotland, whose dream, as they plot the fortunes of their mainly Roman Catholic school teams - to have just one boy go on to don the Hoops.
We'll gladly take your money; we will happily coach your kids and play them in our age group teams - but - don't expect them to ever play for the first team, seems to be the current story out of Parkhead.
Which is unfair. I took the opportunity to look at how the Celtic kids, coached by John Kennedy, got on, in their opening Champions Youth League game, against AC Milan, in Italy.
They lost 3-1. I didn't see clips of the game, or even read a match report. However, I can read a statistical run-down and come to half-decent conclusions and, it appears to me that the Celtic kids weren't that far behind their Italian rivals.
It was 1-1 at half-time, the second-half Italian goals came from the penalty spot and late-on. The shot tried and shots-on-target stats were fairly similar, so, nothing to be upset about there.
I reckon, if the Celtic Under-19s can run AC so-close, they, and the slightly older home-grown Celtic kids, could make an impact in the lower divisions of the Scottish League.
It won't happen, of course. But, as I have long-maintained, we have two huge clubs in Scotland, they could well run two teams each in the Scottish leagues, on the basis that the "development" teams never got into the top-flight.
The big teams' fans would come out for the development teams' games, spreading the cash - it would be a win-win situation all round.
PETER Lawell is a real smoothie, he also, I think, scares those hard men of the Scottish Football Writers Association shitless. So, when he sat down to write Celtic's sort of end of season report, which has gone out to the shareholders, he probably knew he would get pretty-much away with murder.
Lawell praises his club's development programme, fair enough, the Celtic youngsters are the best in Scotland, but, the question is - how many will get even a sniff of a first team slot this season?
The answer is - barring some catastrophic injuries, nil, zilch, narry a one. This is pretty much a slap in the face to the countless janitors and teachers across Scotland, whose dream, as they plot the fortunes of their mainly Roman Catholic school teams - to have just one boy go on to don the Hoops.
We'll gladly take your money; we will happily coach your kids and play them in our age group teams - but - don't expect them to ever play for the first team, seems to be the current story out of Parkhead.
Which is unfair. I took the opportunity to look at how the Celtic kids, coached by John Kennedy, got on, in their opening Champions Youth League game, against AC Milan, in Italy.
They lost 3-1. I didn't see clips of the game, or even read a match report. However, I can read a statistical run-down and come to half-decent conclusions and, it appears to me that the Celtic kids weren't that far behind their Italian rivals.
It was 1-1 at half-time, the second-half Italian goals came from the penalty spot and late-on. The shot tried and shots-on-target stats were fairly similar, so, nothing to be upset about there.
I reckon, if the Celtic Under-19s can run AC so-close, they, and the slightly older home-grown Celtic kids, could make an impact in the lower divisions of the Scottish League.
It won't happen, of course. But, as I have long-maintained, we have two huge clubs in Scotland, they could well run two teams each in the Scottish leagues, on the basis that the "development" teams never got into the top-flight.
The big teams' fans would come out for the development teams' games, spreading the cash - it would be a win-win situation all round.
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