When was the last time we produced a number 9?

Pressures on first team mean any youth will hardly get a chance
Take King for example - had to be thrown into champions league games then hardly seen since
 
rfcally91 said:
Assume he means players contracted to pro clubs aren’t allowed to play
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No I don't I mean School football in general. That was the grass roots. That is where most good players were scouted. I don't know one player that played for a boys club. Players were scouted playing for their school Virtually everyone could play football at school. When that stopped people had to find a youth team to play. Youth teams at that time were mostly clubs with one team so a lot of peopie had to stop playing football. Only the good players or friends of the coach were picked out for most youth teams. Players that weren't quite ready this year but could make it next year stopped playing football because they had to search for a club

I lived in Holland most of my adult life and virtually everyone of ever age and level can play football. Most clubs in Holland have numerous teams. In a small town near me about the size of Renfrew they have two clubs. The biggest has about 14 ordinary senior teams. Then they have a number( about 6 I think) of older players and also handicapped teams. They also have 3 womans teams. Then they have numerous youth teams for every age group. So everyone that wants to play football can play football no matter how good or bad you are. This is all over Holland even in small villages they will have a club with numerous teams That means you have a broad pyramid of players climbing the ladder. You have a number of qualified coaches and mostly fantastic grass pitches that some prof clubs in Scotland would be jealous of.
I don't know how it is now but I think it was crazy that teams as Renfrew Juniors or other Junior clubs never had a youth system behind them. Holland don't just happen to produce great players there is a whole grass root system building up to the prof game.

As I say I have been out of Scotland for years so it may be all changed now.
 
Camby loyalist said:
Seeing that our academy chief is offski made me think, when was the last time we brought through a striker? A proper goalscorer?

Not someone who left and came back but someone who came through our academy or from U21s etc?
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To be fair though, by comparison, very few top clubs have produced their own main striker in the last number of years.
 
Gladstone said:
The physical nature of the Scottish game holds back the development of technical players.

Lenient referees allow hammer throwers to get away with too much rough and tumble, as a result promising technical youth players get their careers ended by injury before they can reach the top level.

Bottom line is Scotland needs much stricter refereeing to make the game less physical and more technical.
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Did it hold back, law etc
 
It’s not easy. I remember reading about Fergie becoming a bit obsessed with Man Utd bringing through a no 9. Closest he got was Wellbeck, and that was with one of the best academies in the world.
 
Ryan Hardie should have got far more game time from 2014-2019 then moved on for a decent fee once we were back in top league challenging for titles instead of some of the poor strikers we signed before Morelos.
 
David Edgar said:
The last no 9 we produced who was a guaranteed starter was Fleck in 86/87.

Nearly 40 years.
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Agreed. He’s probably the benchmark. His namesake could have been (more a 10 of course) but became a CM over the years.

It’s fairly brutal but it does go for all the youths we bring through. Our best prospects are getting nabbed because we don’t give them first team exposure early enough, or pay enough.

We cannot give them exposure because we have no faith in them stepping up and/or we don’t have enough occassions at being comfortably ahead in games to bleed the boys in. Just look at Young-Coombes and Lovelace. Not our products of course but our youth infrastructure isn’t convincing enough to retain prospects from other teams either when we bring them in.

FWIW, Rory Wilson has all the tools to make it to a very good level in the game. Only 18 but there’s not a chance he’d have got anywhere near our first team squads, even now.
 
Vinted said:
When has Scotland produced a good striker. even now we have an Aussie striker I would imagine Mo Johnstone and Lou Macari Joe jordon were the last big name strikers. Did Jordon ever play for a team in Scotland?
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McCoist not worth a shout?
 
Not just a striker but I'd much rather see a Cole McKinnon or a Bailey Rice get a game for us than some of the players we have signed.

Very, very few players actually make it for us straight from the academy.
 
stefanovitch said:
Not just a striker but I'd much rather see a Cole McKinnon or a Bailey Rice get a game for us than some of the players we have signed.

Very, very few players actually make it for us straight from the academy.
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I'm all for promoting youth players, but from the perspective of our manager, whomever that may be, they have to consider what gives them the best chance of winning.

Because that's the one thing we can say every fan wants.

And whether we like it or not, the manager must believe that players like Rice and McKinnon aren't as good as Lundstram, Dowell, Raskin or others. I trust that he has a better view of this than I am ever going to be capable of.

I remember reading an article about our youth team back in the first season of Advocaat, where John Brown was in charge of the reserve team. He said that there were youth players who fully believed they were as good as Gio or others (would love to know where that came from) but he always had to remind them that it wasn't enough to be as good, they had to be better. Football is even more physical than it was then, in terms of the attributes needed to ensure you're not just bullied off the pitch, which adds yet another layer of difficulty. Is Bailey Rice physically and technically better than John Lundstram? From what I have seen, not yet.
 
strider said:
I'm all for promoting youth players, but from the perspective of our manager, whomever that may be, they have to consider what gives them the best chance of winning.

Because that's the one thing we can say every fan wants.

And whether we like it or not, the manager must believe that players like Rice and McKinnon aren't as good as Lundstram, Dowell, Raskin or others. I trust that he has a better view of this than I am ever going to be capable of.

I remember reading an article about our youth team back in the first season of Advocaat, where John Brown was in charge of the reserve team. He said that there were youth players who fully believed they were as good as Gio or others (would love to know where that came from) but he always had to remind them that it wasn't enough to be as good, they had to be better. Football is even more physical than it was then, in terms of the attributes needed to ensure you're not just bullied off the pitch, which adds yet another layer of difficulty. Is Bailey Rice physically and technically better than John Lundstram? From what I have seen, not yet.
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Technically yes, physically no.
 
strider said:
I'm all for promoting youth players, but from the perspective of our manager, whomever that may be, they have to consider what gives them the best chance of winning.

Because that's the one thing we can say every fan wants.

And whether we like it or not, the manager must believe that players like Rice and McKinnon aren't as good as Lundstram, Dowell, Raskin or others. I trust that he has a better view of this than I am ever going to be capable of.

I remember reading an article about our youth team back in the first season of Advocaat, where John Brown was in charge of the reserve team. He said that there were youth players who fully believed they were as good as Gio or others (would love to know where that came from) but he always had to remind them that it wasn't enough to be as good, they had to be better. Football is even more physical than it was then, in terms of the attributes needed to ensure you're not just bullied off the pitch, which adds yet another layer of difficulty. Is Bailey Rice physically and technically better than John Lundstram? From what I have seen, not yet.
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But you will only say he is better when the manager tells you he is ready to play.

I am not sure about any of the young team and dont get to see them very often but i do watch the first team and id say we could do with changing it and giving a few of them their chance. They bring desire and passion and are delighted just to get a chance to play even against Ross or Livi.

I dont think modern football is as physical either if you mean our players getting kicked around due to bent refereeing then yeah but then any player could get injured no matter what age they are.
 
Just in the last year.

Zak Lovelace.

Whether he goes on to be successful is another matter, but he was just starting to break into the team before his injury, which was unfortunate because given our attacking options this season he may well have had more minutes had he been fit.
 
Thornliebank_Bear said:
But you will only say he is better when the manager tells you he is ready to play.

I am not sure about any of the young team and dont get to see them very often but i do watch the first team and id say we could do with changing it and giving a few of them their chance. They bring desire and passion and are delighted just to get a chance to play even against Ross or Livi.

I dont think modern football is as physical either if you mean our players getting kicked around due to bent refereeing then yeah but then any player could get injured no matter what age they are.
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Why shouldn't I listen to the manager on this? He's absolutely the expert, not me.

I don't think our manager, who has been happy to play Ross McCausland and use the likes of Cole McKinnon or Leon King on occasion in tight games, and whose three signings averaged the age of 21, has any issues playing younger players when he deems them good enough.

As for the physical side, by that I mean how footballers are much stronger, faster and fitter on average than ever before. Very few people hit a physical peak by the age of 21, and the 27 year old with the extra 6 years of working on that will often be well ahead in that regard. Technical ability is, at best, on equal footing in terms of importance now.
 
strider said:
Why shouldn't I listen to the manager on this? He's absolutely the expert, not me.

I don't think our manager, who has been happy to play Ross McCausland and use the likes of Cole McKinnon or Leon King on occasion in tight games, and whose three signings averaged the age of 21, has any issues playing younger players when he deems them good enough.

As for the physical side, by that I mean how footballers are much stronger, faster and fitter on average than ever before. Very few people hit a physical peak by the age of 21, and the 27 year old with the extra 6 years of working on that will often be well ahead in that regard. Technical ability is, at best, on equal footing in terms of importance now.
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It is obviously tough for any manager, we are always playing catch up with that mob so i get the point about it being tough to pick young players and he has at least given a few a chance.

You would have to admit though the players getting their chance were not exactly mentioned on here every day as being ready for the first team.

I dont want to get started on Lundstram as i actually feel he gets isolated and is one of the players that takes too much blame after every bad result, but he lacks pace and is not mobile at all and that was your point i highlighted.
 
if you mean produced and then had a good career at Rangers you are going way way back to the likes of DJ.

if you mean came through our academy Hardie / McCormack / Beattie etc all had good careers just not with us.
 
There is a common theme here: every single good Scottish striker of the last twenty years has had the dreaded "limited ability" tag.

The ones that develop generally peak closer to 30 and have average club careers.

It's a valid question from the OP, the last six years haven't been the best for bringing youth players into the first team, but I'm not so sure we have many.

Don't mean to sound bad, but I don't rate McCausland at all.
 
WilkinsBullet said:
This is the correct answer. Made a proper impact and was sold for a decent fee back in the day, though sold prematurely I felt.
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Fleck wanted out of Glasgow. Souness didn't want to sell him.

Souness offered him a new deal that blew Norwich's offer out the water and he still went.
 
Ross_ said:
if you mean produced and then had a good career at Rangers you are going way way back to the likes of DJ.

if you mean came through our academy Hardie / McCormack / Beattie etc all had good careers just not with us.
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I meant the first one mate, it’s actually shocking that a club the size of us hasn’t been able to do this since those days.
 
Dunc1972 said:
Pressures on first team mean any youth will hardly get a chance
Take King for example - had to be thrown into champions league games then hardly seen since
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any decent young player like king should be out on loan to somebody in the spl not playing b games and wasting his time. At the very least we can sell them on for a low fee with a buy back or large sell on %
 
Players don't need to be replacing Lundstram, but Bailey Rice must be kicking himself looking at the minutes Lennon Miller is getting at Motherwell meanwhile he can't even get 20 minutes off the bench for us regularly and is instead playing glorified friendlies with the B team. With the best will in the world I wouldn't be advising my kid to sign for Rangers to advance their football career right now.
 
Vinted said:
When has Scotland produced a good striker. even now we have an Aussie striker I would imagine Mo Johnstone and Lou Macari Joe jordon were the last big name strikers. Did Jordon ever play for a team in Scotland?
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Errr... Did you sleep away the Ally McCoist era???
 
The one that first sprung to my mind was Gordon Dalziel.
I remember him breaking into the Rangers team as a very young lad 1979 he was 17 I think
 
Chris Traeger said:
Players don't need to be replacing Lundstram, but Bailey Rice must be kicking himself looking at the minutes Lennon Miller is getting at Motherwell meanwhile he can't even get 20 minutes off the bench for us regularly and is instead playing glorified friendlies with the B team. With the best will in the world I wouldn't be advising my kid to sign for Rangers to advance their football career right now.
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As much as I don't think that having the B team play in a league made up of part time players is the best way for them to develop properly, it was a bad decision imo to unilaterally withdraw from the Lowland League without having some other sort of league set up to take part in. They need to be playing more regularly and only a few have gone out on loan and got a good amount of game time at a decent level.
 
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