On a patch of open ground somewhere in west London, two of Scotland's most promising midfield prospects duel in front of a handful of spectators.

Stick a hundred quid on either ever graduating to their club's first team and, at the odds of probability, you could win back the paltry transfer fees which plucked them from the SPL. Having chosen to slither into the Premiership ocean while still just footballing tadpoles, if they find the habitat too hostile then the losers will not only be Jack Grimmer and Islam Feruz, but Aberdeen, Celtic and Scotland; meanwhile Fulham and Chelsea will simply make a minor amendment to the Loss on Disposal of Intangible Assets line on their accounts and move on to the next batch.

Add Scott Allan - considerably older but a similarly speculative 'project signing' - and the Scottish football economy has, in the space of six months, lost three of its brightest talents for the aggregate sum of less than a million pounds.

This is not a freak case of bad news coming in threes, it's the start of a trend which, if allowed to continue unchecked, will have devastating consequences for the Scottish game.

The rules as they stand offer no disincentive for EPL coaches with transfer kitties so vast they could swim in them to assemble whole squads of players from other people's youth teams, and by extension they offer no incentive for SPL clubs to go to the bother of having a youth system at all.

A combination of current regulations, with the aggravating factors of geographical proximity and a common language making Scotland an attractive market for English scouts, actively corrode SPL clubs' ability to hold onto good young players.

Firstly, they aren't allowed to tie players to contracts longer than two years until they reach 18, an age by which anyone with uncommon ability will already have begun to display it at either club or international age group level. The rule was implemented with noble cause - to stop clubs routinely offering S-Formers decade long deals on chickenfeed pay - but the landscape has changed so radically since Jim McLean's Dundee United days, with all power long since departing the clubs' hands, that this must urgently be reviewed.

There is a clear argument for operating a system similar to the NFL's 'franchise tag', where each club gets the opportunity to identify one particularly valuable player from its youth ranks and sign him to a longer deal on a higher wage to prevent him being snatched for beer money as soon as he becomes legally allowed to drink.

The second aspect in which the rules are manifestly unfair is that the 'training compensation' fee which dictates the transfer value of under-18s depends on the standard of the team from which he is taken.

That is to say, it is cheaper for Fulham to sign a player from Aberdeen than it would be to sign the same player from Real Madrid. Indeed, by stripping Scotland of its top young talent at basement prices the EPL is consciously diminishing our ability to compete on the field in years to come, which will knock down our coefficient yet further - so not only are they getting the class of 2012 on the cheap, they are slashing the amount they'll have to pay for those of 2013 and beyond. Football is already too slanted in favour of those who already have: this is obscenely unjust.

And thirdly, compensation dues are dramatically reduced for the years between the ages of 12 and 16 once they reach majority - precisely the period when we should be encouraging players to remain with clubs where they can grow into first-teamers. Any SPL player who reaches the end of his first professional contract can currently be picked up by an EPL side for less than £160,000, regardless of ability. This discounting of under-16 training was intended to avoid unrealistically high fees for players like Chris Maguire, but its effect is to make those such as Allan an irresistibly cheap gamble: to nobody's benefit. For the sake of two weeks' of Nedum Onuoha's wages, our best kids are having their careers stalled.