signings are risky

Let’s get the gainsaying out of the way first of all. There will be those who will snipe that any impact these players can make here, having conspicuously failed to do so at Everton, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Eskisehirspor and Portland, will merely go to show the poor quality of Scottish football. Guff. It would prove that no more than the chortlesome inefficacy of World Cup winner Stephane Guivarc’h and Champions League final match-winner Basile Boli during their brief visits proved those tournaments to be easier to play in than the Premier Division. Sometimes people just fare better in a familiar environment, and given that the skills of these two players have already carried them to SPL star status once it would be absolutely no embarrassment to the league if they could regain the fitness to allow it to happen again.

Nor are they here for some easy cash. For all that has befallen the pair since last they had queues of suitors at their doors, there is little doubt that each could have found more lucrative short-term deals in the nether regions of the English leagues had that been their sole concern. Indeed, being signed outwith what where already tiny budgets, they could probably earn more in a call centre. They can only be here because they want to play here, even if only temporarily.

It is an interesting inversion of the usual flow of Scottish talent: SPL regulars fleeing the country at the first opportunity, only to be loaned unspectacularly around the Npower league – now that is embarrassing to the SPL. Often they would, eventually, come back, but only in their twilight years as their powers waned. Usually to Aberdeen. But in McFadden and Boyd – and potentially Craig Gordon and Kevin Thomson, now also back training in Scotland – we have international players who, though their bodies may indeed be protesting that their time in professional sport is rapidly expiring, should still according to their birth certificates be capable of making a significant impression in our game. Add to that the quickfire return to Scotland of relatively young things like Mark Reynolds, Scott Robertson and Ryan Stevenson, plus the loan successes of Leigh Griffiths and Danny Wilson, and perhaps we can be hopeful that there is a growing band of Scottish footballers who are finally appreciating that the streets of the English leagues are not, in fact, paved with gold.

Certainly any excitement which such players can generate through their continuing deeds helps in persuading the generations behind them to stick around for that extra season or two, and that is no bad thing. The most pressing and fundamental problem which Scottish football currently faces is the invidious situation of being on the one hand, for financial reasons, increasingly dependent upon young players, but on the other powerless, because of the rules, to stop them being poached by richer clubs before they are ready for senior games. An influx of weel-kent faces who tried and failed serves as a timely caution to today’s teens, and if it raises the overall quality of the league at the same time then so much the better.

There is no doubt that, for the individual clubs, these signings are risky. But for the league itself there is only upside.

There is no doubt that, for the individual clubs, these signings are risky. But for the league itself there is only upside.

There is no doubt that, for the individual clubs, these signings are risky. But for the league itself there is only upside.