http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/33279795

Apparently we are overrun with non-Scottish journeymen. Thoughts?

 

Maybe we're being biased, but there is not doubt that his argument is flawed on many levels:

1) We are outside the central belt, and as mentioned have no access to performance schools. There is no way in hell that we can tempt young players from the central belt to come up to Inverness and play for our academy, and thus we are more or less restricted to players coming from Inverness and some of the surrounding areas. 

2) We have only been a club since 1994. Building a successful academy does not happen over night. It takes finance, building a scouting network, building links with local clubs, hiring/training qualified coaches, building facilities, and not to mention building a reputation as a club that parents want their kids to play for with a view of developing them into professional footballers. 

3) Journeymen who aren't of the highest quality? I don't think there's a single player in our squad that I would label a journeyman, and all-in-all the players we have recruited have been of the highest quality relative to players we have had in the past, have been loyal to the club, and have left a huge legacy at the club. b

4) If I was a 14-15 year old lad from Inverness, I would recognise that in the last few years, Nick Ross (Scotland Under 21's), Graeme Shinnie (Scotland Under 21's and surely a future Scotland international), Liam Polwarth, Calum Ferguson, Grant Munro etc hav gotten through the academy, and you have just as much chance of getting through the academy as with pretty much any other club. 

5) For me, having 5 players in a cup final who have came through academy is not a bad return at all! What club in the SPL actually has more home-grown players than that? 

 

In summary, what a load of pish.

lightwelter, your last sentence sums it up perfectly

I suppose we are an easy target, having won the Scottish cup, for this ill-informed and unfair attack and makes an easy headline.  This "consultant" has taken no account of our finances and geographical issues in regard to merits of our youth system.

Few clubs can compete with Celtic who can just buy in ready made young Scottish player such Armstrong and GMS.

 

caleyboy makes the point that most boys do not end up as professionals, and of course he's right. I doubt you could decrease the number of youth players in the system, however, without beginning to have combined age teams, or missing out age groups, which would mean Caley would not meet the required criteria to take part in the national youth system. I'd also note that quite a number of ex-Caley youth players seem to sign for Highland League teams, or other local sides, so I don't know if they would feel they had wasted their time by being in the youth system- we'd have to ask them.   

I'd look to the fact that Caley's U17s won their league in 2014/15, which, according to the fixture list on the ICT website, included St Johnstone, Ross County and Dundee. So, in playing terms, we must be turning out youth teams at least as able as those clubs. There may be an issue, I guess, of whether U20 players make the move to first team players, but as others have noted in this thread, we do have recent evidence that at least some players are making the leap.

Edited June 26, 201510 yr by Garrincha

Shinnie can't get a look in with the national squad despite having been the best and most consistent left back in the country, certainly of Scottish nationality, so we could have a whole team of youth products and it wouldn't help Scotland as they never look beyond Dundee.

As stated, best kid in the country according to the writers. Surely that's not a bad achievement?

And the age of the club is a fairly significant factor. At 21 years of age it's only now we'd be expected to be producing players that have only ever known ICT. And even less time as a Premiership club. There's no point in trying to hide the possibility that when ICT were in the lower divisions or when the Caley and Thistle were playing that youngsters may have either had "big teams", or just plain wanted to go further in the game....thus signing for bigger clubs at a younger age.

It's just trolling. Youth policy is fine and will only get better. Wee team, wee population. They're just having a pop because they genuinely don't get what it is that enables this club to do what it does. Youth policy? Of course. Football policy? Great club.