One of the many noteworthy findings from the Scottish FA’s transition report was the apparent busting of the myth that the Scottish Premiership was a uniquely pressurised environment, where the demand to win it made it difficult for Celtic and Rangers to blood youngsters, and the small size of the league brought enough jeopardy for just about everyone else to have the same effect.

By citing similarly sized leagues in comparably sized countries such as Denmark, and the stark difference between the playing time there for native youngsters under the age of 21 to here, the report looked to demonstrate that the number of teams in any one division should be no barrier to giving young players opportunities at first team level.

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In theory, that seems a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. As someone who has been in a position of authority at one of Scotland’s biggest clubs, though, and who has been charged with balancing the need for immediate results with the desire to hone and develop young talent, Joe Savage found that in practice, throwing youngsters into such a febrile environment wasn’t so straightforward.

The former sporting director at Hearts had close relationships with the managers who worked under him in Robbie Neilson and Steven Naismith, both of whom were passionate about the need to feed academy graduates through into the first team set-up.

When the results turned though, and the fans did too, the abuse that was aimed at both of those men - as well as at him personally – made him fully understand why they may have baulked at turning to some of the club’s prospects.

“It's very, very difficult,” Savage said.

“There's that saying isn't there, that the fans will treat the younger players a wee bit differently and they'll not get on their backs, and I don't disagree with that. But the manager feels that pressure if they're not winning, because they won't shout at the young player, they'll shout at him.

“They'll give him abuse and any manager, they're a human being, they don't like it. They don't want it, they hate it. So, they want to win games, and they feel whoever is the best player at that time to play in these games, they'll play them.

“I don't know how you change the mentality of people, because I think a big problem in Scotland is what we see on a daily basis from fans and on social media, that the need to win and the need to be the team that's always winning football games, and always developing players, and results, results, results. You can't get results sometimes if you have to give that 17, 18, 19-year-old the opportunity.

“I think we’re an angry nation. I do believe that we've got good young players in the country, we've got good coaches in the country. They obviously need opportunities, but the pressure on the management and the coaching staff to deliver results, it supersedes that, it definitely supersedes that.

“You look at the clubs that try and play the younger players, they turn over managers very quickly, because they might lose five or six or seven games in a row, the next minute the fans are hounding them on social media, battering them and people buckle to that.

“Everybody watches and reads social media, they're seeing it all the time and things are trending constantly. Young players are on social media, older players are on social media as well, coaches are on social media, everybody's on, and for me that's been a big part of the problem for Scottish football, everybody's got that easy access to go and say what they want.

“Everybody's entitled to their opinion, I'm not saying that they're not, but sometimes when the personal abuse that these people take results in them sitting there thinking, ‘I'm going to give the fans what they want, I'm going to change that, I'm going to make changes’.

“I've been on that side of things, I've felt the pressure. I witnessed 18,000 fans against St Mirren at Tynecastle singing ‘Nielson, Nielson, get to f***’, and it was hard to watch. I was close to Robbie.

“As soon as the stadium turns on you, though…and that's just, that's obviously hard.”

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Savage, Naismith and the backroom coaching team at Hearts were consulted by the SFA’s Andy Gould and Chris Docherty in the compiling of the transition report, and he was impressed by the final product.

But until the short-term mentality from fans and from within that Scottish football biosphere shifts towards a longer-term outlook, there may be little change in the amount of trust that managers can generally place in young players. After all, what they are really placing into their hands, is their jobs.

“Look at the situation that Hearts found themselves in,” he said.

“I obviously left in May, I know Steven had plans to play all these kids, because Steven, he was an advocate, he wanted to develop them, and he wanted to play them.

“But he lost a game, then he lost another game, then he lost another game, and he's sitting thinking, ‘who can I turn to here to get me a result?’ Because at the end of it, let’s be honest, that's what he ended up needing. He needed to win a game, and he needed to turn to these ‘tried and tested’ players, if you like.

“I’m not going to argue with anyone that says, ‘how can you not say that an 18-year-old's not going to bail you out and give you an opportunity to win the game?’ I can't argue that he will or he won't, I can't speak for Steven Naismith, but he watched training all week.

“He had seen what he wanted to see, he had an idea of how he wanted the team to play, and he picked the formation of the team that he felt was the best team to win that game, like the Celtic manager does, like the Rangers manager does, like the Dundee United manager does.”

Do managers in Scotland though still hold too much of that power in their hands?

Elsewhere in Europe, Savage may have had greater influence, and as the SFA’s transition report outlined, it is clubs who are structured in such a way who most consistently will produce players who will make their first team, and perhaps ultimately go on to earn their club a hefty transfer fee.

Was he ever frustrated for instance, sitting up in the stand, that his wider plan to bleed young players into the Hearts side was being stymied by a manager desperately clinging to his job?

“I can honestly say I never felt frustrated, because I knew how tough the job was at Hearts for Steven and for Robbie,” he said.

“I knew what it was like.

“What we’re talking about now, I experienced it, we witnessed it first-hand when we played Rangers in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup.

“One of the players was down injured in the middle of the park, so Steven decided he was going to bring Macaulay Tait on as an 18-year-old.

“Macaulay had been flying for the B team, had done brilliant for the B team, he was nicknamed ‘Baby Xavi’, because he could just take it, pass it, take it, pass it. All the first team players loved him, he was doing excellent.

“Steven puts him on, and he played before that, but he put him on with maybe a good 30 or 40 minutes to go. The ball was played into Macaulay in the middle of the park, now every day of the week, Macaulay would take this ball, take a touch, turn out, pass it out.

“The ball comes into the middle of the park, he takes a heavy touch, Rangers press, take the ball off him, pass it to Cyriel Dessers and bang, Rangers score, make it 2-0, absolutely, kill the game.

“Wee Macaulay was absolutely devastated. He was a Hearts fan, he grew up a Hearts fan. The boys, everyone got around him, tried to gee him up and make him feel better, but he felt that weight.

“That heavy touch against Rangers, it didn’t cost us the game, because ultimately, we weren't good enough to get back into the game. But that was the moment where you're sitting there thinking, you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.

“It was a great idea bringing Macaulay on, because he's done brilliantly for the B team, and he deserved his chance and his opportunity. I was more devastated for Macaulay after what happened, because I knew he would take it to heart, and it would affect him, because it would affect anyone. It’s the national stadium, his national cup semi-final, and he's made a mistake.

“But Steven was picking young players in difficult venues. I remember we started Aidan Denholm away to Celtic in the game that we beat them 2-0 just before Christmas.

“That was quite a surprise for a lot of people, but Stephen knew Aidan's energy and his legs would disrupt the way Celtic wanted to play, and we'd get up and we'd get after the ball, we'd put them under pressure, and that was a magnificent performance from Aidan that day.

“We gave James Wilson a debut at 16 years of age, so we wanted to do it. Now, did we do it enough? No, we probably didn't, I'm not going to sit here and say that we did.

“But you also have to see what you're bringing through from the youths and then compare them to what's already in the squad and think, can they do a better job?

“Because at the end of the day the ultimate aim is to win the game, and the manager decides who he thinks is going to win the game for him.”


Savage believes the likes of Tait, Denholm (currently impressing on loan at Ross County) and Wilson, along with other talents bubbling away under the surface at Hearts like the exciting Finlay Pollock, can become mainstays of their first team in the years to come.

If and when they do, they will have their grounding in the Lowland League with the Hearts B team to thank for it, in his book. At least in part.

While he is intrigued by the idea of the co-operation system mooted in the SFA’s transition report, particularly when it comes to the benefits of slowly moving young players up through the leagues in a first-team environment, he is certain that the introduction of the B team has already proven hugely beneficial to the young players at the club.

“I can only speak for Hearts, but we felt it was massive,” he said.

“We felt it developed so many of our players playing against men, and the Lowland League is a great league, in my opinion. It's a brilliant league, some good teams, some competitive teams in it, good budgets to go and spend.

“I can't speak on behalf of Celtic and Rangers to explain why more players have not broken through to their first teams, I don't know. I think Celtic and Rangers are both at a top, top level, they've obviously historically got the best support in the country, so it's hard for kids to break through.

“From our point of view, we looked at the B team, and we felt the first team was too big. I spoke with Robbie Nielson and the coaching staff, and spoke with Steven Naismith, he was the under-18s coach at that point. When the B team became what it became, Steven took over that, and we felt, helped them unbelievably.

“I remember going to a game against Bo’ness, where it was so tough, and it was so rough, our boys were getting battered and thrown about, and there was absolutely no quarter given from the Bo’ness boys. It was brilliant, they absolutely battered us. They were just too big and too strong for our players, but it was a great learning curve for the players.

“I remember phoning [Hearts CEO] Andrew McKinlay after the game, saying ‘this is brilliant, we've just been battered, but I can tell you right now Andrew, that will stand them so much in good stead.’ “And playing in front of a crowd, playing in front of the Bo’ness fans, they are a big junior club, they've got a bit of history behind them, that helps too.

“Those cold Tuesday nights, and you're playing down at Civil Service, or you're playing at Caledonian Braves, and the winds battering you, the boys don't like it, because the boys are thinking, ‘oh this is not really what I thought this would be’.

“Then Liam Fox, with the coaching and the experience he had, he took them to a new level last year, they were more organised, they were better prepared because of the year that they had experienced. They knew what they were coming up against, they knew the levels, they knew the standards, and the B team last year were absolutely brilliant.

“We beat the champions East Kilbride twice, who ended up going up, and again, good team, well coached. So we always felt that it would be good, it definitely proved to be better than we ever thought, and ever imagined it could be.

“Now, you could certainly say, ‘well Joe, how has that been highlighted in the first team?’ Well, Macaulay Tait, he's played a lot for the first team, James Wilson's been in and around the first team from 17 years of age, Finlay Pollock's a top, top player. Adam Forrester's started two of the last three games.

“So, we felt that it was a success for us.”