Summit Up and The Lowdown By Donald C Stewart

Date: 11th September 2026

Summit Up and The Lowdown

By Donald C Stewart

If you listen to pundits all the time, you will realise that this is a results business. It’s a game where figures matter, and they matter a lot. If a manager is not putting together a run of wins, then the pressure that is placed upon their shoulders is immense, intense and likely to lead to some sort of bust-up. That might be on the field, in a boardroom or with somebody on the terraces. But ultimately, at the end of the day, the pressure that clubs face and managers have to reflect is absolutely intense.

And so, when the decision makers, all healthily no doubt, got together with coffee (caffeine free) and croissants (unbuttered) in St Andrews to have a wee chat about how they are going to increase the number of under-21 players from a Scottish Maw and Dha, there was a lot of eyes gazing from across the whole of Scotland.

The proposal that there should be two under-21 Scotland eligible players starting in all Scottish Cup matches with one player on the pitch at all times; two under-21 Scotland eligible players start in all Premier Sports Cups matches with one player on the pitch at all times; and thirdly an under 21 Scotland eligible player in all four SPFL divisions should play an average of 60 minutes per game across the season which is a modest 6% of the available minutes are a real start. But wait, they need to be ratified. They are not policy yet.

The statistics and the numbers that are important are around the UEFA coefficient. Last season 18,706 minutes in the topflight last year had under 21 Scottish players elbowing their way around a Premiership park. In 2013 that was 80,345 minutes. The change between 2013 and now is the old rule about under 21 players having to be in a squad of 18 was abolished.

It is therefore quite incredible given the lack of game time for eligible under-21 Scotland players that we got into three major tournaments in a row. It puts Steve Clarke’s achievements in more of a positive light.as is aid though it’s a results business and though Clarke got us there, he couldn’t get us out of the group stages. It perhaps showed the paucity of the bench and the lack of depth alongside the decision making that Clarke got wrong.

Of the nine games we played and the three tournaments he got us to, there is nobody who’s going to see them as a triumph. We got to the top of the hill but then fell off it. What we need to look at now is whether we have the right parachute in terms of youth developing players.

Those three ideas, I think are admirable. I think they should be seen as the first step. Of the presentations at St. Andrews, it would have been the one from Club Brugge, recruitment director Guilian Preud’homme around the success where they shifted from importing overseas players into homegrown talent to become Belgian champions which should be the badge that people wish to wear in six to twelve months.

My worry is that, as we all know when we go to training, that once we come away from it, we are enthused, going to implement everything that we have heard, believe absolutely in the fervency and relevance of every single thing that we have heard. We go into our work with a newly found vigour. We are an advocate. We are telling everybody how great this would be.

By the end of the week, when people are not as enthusiastic as we are, it begins to dim. After about three or four weeks, it has almost vanished and disappeared.

That is the problem with change. What we need is not one simple meeting in St Andrews in the early part of September. We need an action plan that begins in October. We need a review in November. We need people being held to their feet to the fire by the time we get to Christmas to look at what positive changes we have seen. We also need risk management to mitigate against the naysayers.

There shall be many and they shall start murmuring, increase to being significant and then the tumultuous noise on the terraces as their club is being asked to sacrifice league position for greater good is challenged because they represent their club not the SFA. Then open opposition and they “though it was laudable it was just not workable” announcements. The five-stage commitment to leaving things as the status quo.

Right now, there shall be the beginnings of some saying it could diminish the product. People already have an ambivalent view over the quality of Scottish football. It may be suggested that we won’t have all the foreign imports that delighted and thrilled us in the past. They may point to your Henrik Larsons and Brian Laudrups and Claudia Caniggia and all the rest who happened to grace our turf with their presence. They might not, of course, include all of the flops. There have been many; there still are many.

But whilst they come to see if they can pick up a wage, many of our younger kids are now deciding with their feet to go down south to go abroad to go anywhere where they can get a game of football. Instead of deciding that a loan period at Stenhousemuir is what they want they may actually decide to go and be an English academy and disappear into that quagmire or chance their arm at the likes of an Italian or a Spanish second or third league side. Why not? The weather’s better though with the global emergency perhaps that won’t last forever.

What has to change is how we deal with our younger players because without them then all the talk of what this new Belgian guy is going to do is just fantasy

But it’s a start. What we need is increased pressure to really facilitate change. Without it, the nation will go through many World Cup disappointments. Whether that happens in a summer or in the lighter spring nights when we fall short of qualification will be debatable. But without change, things always stay the same.

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Tags: Fan Led Review, oor Donald, Scottish football, SFA, SPFL