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I meant Shane Sutherland. Sorry, thought I quoted the post about him. Me and technology don't always get on.

Maybe you read that Yule won't appear until December.

TBH Scotty I have never believed that the Scottish Development league has done anything to develop our youngsters. Personally I am a great believer in sticking the young uns with potential in with the more experienced pros so that they are training and playing with better, more mature players. We used to to do this and these young lads had their kidneys dunted by the old HFL defender and told not to come back or there would be more. I know that's not football but they grew up a lot quicker and developed a lot quicker, Grant Munro, Ike Fraser to name but two. I just wonder where we are going from here.

It is pretty sensible. MLS may be a joke to some, and to be honest it did not exactly do much to disprove that opinion for a while. But MLS 2.0, which started in the 90s, and which has really started to grow exponentially since 2006, is vastly different to the MLS of the days when Pele, Beckenbauer, Best et all came to play for The New York Cosmos back in the 70s. (even if the NY Cosmos name was recently revived in one of the lower leagues). Of course there are the 'designated players' here for a final payday - Drogba, Lampard, Gerrard to name 3 recent ones - and there are also ones that somewhat defy explanation - Barry Robson, Kris Boyd, Shaun Maloney, Kenny Miller - to name a few Scottish ones we have all heard of, but there are also some quality players over the years both above and below the 30 mark. David Beckham and Thierry Henry may have been over 30 when they arrived but both were still excellent players. I have no time for brand Beckham but there was no denying his quality, even as he got longer in the tooth, and the same can be said for Henry, despite the dogs abuse he got every time he came to Toronto for cheating against Ireland !!! Nowadays we get to see Kaka, Andrea Pirlo, David Villa, and Bastian Schweinsteiger ... but maybe more importantly we also get to see the likes of Michael Bradley (29), Jozy Altidore (27), Sebastian Giovinco (just turned 30), Giovanni Dos Santos (28) and other players under 30 who have made the move to MLS with some still starring regularly for their national teams. The same impetus has been put into future development. ...... The newer version of MLS has grown slowly, has made it a requirement of entry that all teams must have purpose built youth academies and youth policies, have set policies in place that give teams incentives (or less squad and salary cap penalties) to use 'homegrown' or 'generation adidas' players and now they are expanding the affiliations with other teams or seeking entry into the lower leagues. It is done not to benefit the clubs themselves, but to benefit the development of youth and those leagues. The ultimate aim is to make the USA national team into one of the best in the world by promoting, developing and nurturing that young talent alongside the mentorship of senior players ... and by default to do the same for Canada who are part of the setup with Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal (and possibly Ottawa, Edmonton and others in future). Do the most basic of research and you cant help be impressed with the aims and goals. I liked this article (and part two that it links to at the end) as a kind of summary : http://lastwordonsports.com/2014/07/25/mls-3-0-series-history-mls-1-0/ and this one that shows how Candian 'soccer' is benefitting : http://lastwordonsoccer.com/2017/01/17/mls-3-0-canadian-soccer/ . The most recent Canadian squads showed 22 players of 24 in the U17 team came from 4 clubs. Toronto (11), Montreal (2), Ottawa (3) and Vancouver (6) with one each from Dinamo Zagreb and Auxerre. The U20 squad had 8 of 20 from Toronto FC II (5), Vancouver (2) or Ottawa (1), and the most recent full squad had 15 players from the main Canadian teams. The transformation in the national team fortunes is going to be like Iceland ..... people - including Canadians - are going to be saying 'its just Canada' but assuming they continue to promote development then at some point everything is going to click and they will explode onto the world scene. The USA may end up as a top team, but Canada definitely has the potential to be a decent level team on the world stage. perhaps not world beaters, but maybe perpetual qualification and the odd foray into the latter stages of the odd competition.

Right on - I've a heck of a lot more optimism about this coming season than I had a couple of weeks ago..

Izzy--good post! Time for some real objectivity and positivity now. Robertson seems to be a bustler who wears his heart on his sleeve. His temperament is that of a hustler too who won't suffer fools gladly and what he says is what he means. Cards on the table stuff but coming from a person with a wealth of background experience which unfortunately, Richie did not have. Chalk compared to cheese actually. I.e. he should garner the respect of the troops quickly and his advice and instructions should be heard loud and clear and applied as instructed... or else? IMHO -- just the ticket for ICT at this juncture of their history. Gentlemen of the Jury--it's onward and upward.

Scottish football is full of ideas that never die and this is one of them. There is no evidence that this would help young players develop and it takes well-supported leagues that contain teams who develop excellent young players and turns them into warm-ups for rich clubs reserve teams. In terms of their size and wealth clubs like Hamilton Accies and Livingston have been far more successful than the Old Firm in producing young players. Of the Scotland team who played on Saturday there were two Hearts youth products (Gordon and Berra), two Celtic (Tierney and Mulgrew), two Dundee Utd (Armstrong and Robertson), two Livingston (Grifiths and Snodgrass) one each from Hibs (Brown), Hamilton (McArthur), Middlesborough (Morrison), Aberdeen (Fraser), Wycombe (Anya) and Norwich City (Martin). Of the two teams (the Old Firm) who will be the Colt teams there were two players, one of whom, Mulgrew, is pish. Consider the vast sums of money spent by Rangers over the years on youth players and facilities and they have less success than Livingston. Colt teams really sum up the sort of discussion we have about football in this country - there are many, many things that make German and Spanish football produce better young players than in Scotland but the one that is picked up and hammered, over and over again for years, is B teams, 'Colt' teams. It's something that is pretty simple to explain and understand but actually shies away from the real reasons why young Scottish players don't do as well (not enough quality coaching at a young age, not enough facilities, lack of structured national programmes etc). The current rules say that B teams can't be included above the fifth tier of Scottish football. I think that's fine - we ourselves used to have a 'B' team in the North Caldonian League and there are other teams who have the same. The idea that you could have reserve teams squeezing out professional sides is a joke. Of the teams in last season's Premiership us, Ross County, Hamilton Accies, Rangers and Partick Thistle have played in the lower half of the league system in the last twenty years.

Kenny can take NO responsibility for the ST price decision, the complete bungling of the crucially important announcement of that controversial move or the more or less total information blackout there has otherwise been since relegation and his departure. That has all been under the new watch. The lack of information, communication or even acknowledgement that the fans and the public exist, cannot be laid at the door of the departure of CaleyD (although there was a rumour that he may not remain departed.) It's not rocket science putting stuff out to the media or on social media and I'm sure plenty people could have done this - if asked to do so from boardroom level. Ross County, for instance, issued three press releases today alone - and all directly to newsdesks, avoiding the complete nuisance of constantly checking the cybersphere. So we now know that Roy MacGregor will have another face to face with the fans at a Supporters' Open Meeting, that County have appointed Emily Wilson as their new General Manager and that NEW sales of the £200 Jail End STs have risen to 300. And that's just today's ration. This is all information which it's in the club's interest to volunteer, but I am enough of a conspiracy theorist also to note that, for instance, today's three releases show that County are 1) Communicating with their fans, including directly via the Chairman. 2) Are dealing with and publicising major appointments quickly and efficiently and 3) Are (OK with more than a little apparent help from a benefactor) attempting to increase their market share, especially in the face of the open goal which has voluntarily materialised in Inverness. Quite clearly County are specifically seeking to exploit ICT's weaknesses to their own advantage and who can blame them? It's called competition. Meanwhile on this side there's been a complete clampdown with everything remaining in the dark - to ICT's huge peril and disadvantage. I'm mystified as to why the new Chairman, as one of his first priorities, didn't set up and publicise a face to face open meeting with the Inverness fans. I certainly know very little about him apart from an unconfirmed anecdote that he lives in Edinburgh. But even if there was really quite little to say, the gesture and being seen to have made it, would have addressed at least some of the mounting dissatisfaction we are seeing. If Roy MacGregor can do this as a matter of course, surely it's far more urgent at a critical moment for Caley Thistle? Having observed the development of this club since before it was even born, I am quite dismayed that the critical, indeed potentially fatal, issue of obvious supporter disillusionment has now been ignored over the 23 vital days since relegation - which will best be remembered for a complete car crash of an announcement about season ticket prices. (By the way at the time of the last relegation, George Fraser was the Chairman.)