WishyWell

Injured players generally do get less game time.

The Academy finishes at u17 age-group. Crags will work with Leitchy in their separate roles and will report to the manager. The manager does take a close interest in the young ones anyway.

He's from our area and was with our Academy until round about u15s age when Celtic enticed him away. After he went to Celtic he played for Scotland and captained Celtic and Scotland at several agegroups. Joined QoS to get regular first team football after the usual buffers were hit at Parkhead for young players. Good player with a great engine and an even better attitude.

The fact that a Rangers supporters club bus left from the FPC had, I think, something to do with the desire to remove them from within the stadium.

Haha no worries. I saw that Twitter Guy had got it wrong. Still, good to see some of the young guys getting a chance.

It was six, three of which are already full time, but it's still a fair number from that age group, especially as one of the six is u16s age.

The UEFA guidelines are a minimum payment - it seems clubs can (I don't know the exact mechanics of it) hold out for more if the circumstances dictate it.Celtic regularly pay more for young teenagers than we pay for first team players, as did the previous incarnation of Rangers. A few years back Rangers were reported to have spent £50,000 rebuilding their u14s, and two or three years ago Celtic paid Hamilton up to £150,000 (depending on what story you hear) for three boys who are only now u17s age.

Yes, any club (including boys clubs) that they were signed to from the age of 11 onwards get a share based on the number of years they had the boy.

My understanding of it is that, if an Academy player is offered a contract for the next season but rejects it and signs for another club, the new club has to pay compensation equivalent to an amount (set by UEFA) for each year the boy has been at the previous club. It used to be 3000 Euros but I've no idea what it is now. It is not uncommon for clubs like Celtic to offer a contract to a boy they have no desire to keep after scunnering him by never playing him for months, so that technically it is him who is choosing to leave and they are due money.

The other advantage in summer football is for your youth development. I watched our u17s two Sundays ago playing in driving sleet, freezing rain and howling winds. Every boy came off looking ill and one boy collapsed when the ball hit him in the face and his body was so cold it went into shock. Plus you can imagine the quality of the football. I know these were extreme conditions but you'll have many more occasions over the summer months where the conditions are much more suited to teaching boys at training and letting them try to put it into practice in games, than you will over the winter. I know they have to learn to cope with all sorts of conditions, but at the development stages the betters the conditions they have, whether it be pitch quality, coaching standards or weather, the better and quicker they will learn. Also, if your season spans the summer, your coaches and boys will be around when the kids are on on holiday from school, meaning more opportunities for extra training, either special days where you bring in a visiting coach of some sort or weeks where a club coach could do a lot of intensive work with them. If we want to produce the best players we can, we have to look at all the aspects that will let us do so.

I may be wrong, but I was sure he was already a Motherwell player when he played in the Lanarkshire team in the Children's games in 2011.

What Hamilton do have is relentless PR for their youth system. I don't know if it's the same across all the age groups, but from seeing my boy's squad play them over the years they seem to fill their teams with giants, and then gain a reputation for winning games. I once saw them win a game against us at under-12s where the score was 7-1 and six of their goals came from corners where the ball and five of their boys, all of whom were a head taller than our centre halves, arrived at the near post at the same time. It was formula football that didn't develop boys as players but gained them wins, and let them use that to say how well their youth teams were doing. They also live off McCarthy, McArthur and Easton, mentioning them at every opportunity, which is a bit like us saying that because McFadden and McAllister came from our youth system, then our Academy has been wonderful ever since. But you can't fault their PR. Our Academy has a lot of talent in it and Scott Leitch, I really believe, has it running on the right lines - it's just that we don't shout about it but just get on with trying to develop good players, rather than big boys. And we now have a manager who is looking to pick a team based on talent and ability, regardless of age. I think these things take time, but I don't think the situation with our youth set-up is as bad as it is sometimes made out to be.

He played 90 mins for the 20s last night.

He is one of the senior coaches in our Academy and the most qualified. His is also highly-regarded by both the boys and the parents of the age-group he has directly coached, which is rare in pro-youth football. Whether any of that merits him a more senior position at the club is for others more knowlegable than me to say, but it does explain his presence.

In case it is of interest, here are the 20s fixtures up to the end of the year (although I also included the first one in January to show when they start back). It's worth remembering that they can change at short notice, so I would keep an eye on the club website or Twitter in the lead-up to each game, but at least this will give you a general idea. 5/8/1 Hamilton Motherwell 19/8/14 Motherwell Aberdeen 2/9/14 Hearts Motherwell 9/9/14 Motherwell Dunfermline 16/9/14 Hibernian Motherwell 30/9/14 Free week 7/10/14 Motherwell InvernessCT 14/10/14 Rangers Motherwell 21/10/14 Motherwell Kilmarnock 28/10/14 St Johnstone Motherwell 4/11/14 Motherwell StMirren 11/11/14 Dundee Utd Motherwell 18/11/14 Motherwell Celtic 25/11/14 Dundee Motherwell 2/12/14 Motherwell RossCounty 9/12/14 Partick Thistle Motherwell 16/12/14 Motherwell Falkirk 22/12/14 Aberdeen Motherwell 13/1/15 Motherwell Hearts

I have a note of the fixtures up to the end of the year. I'll post them in a new thread when I get a chance.

As the parent of a boy in the Youth System who has been there since Chris McCart's time, I can say I'm pleased with the way things are starting to go at the moment. Certainly, in WishyWell Junior's team, a more direct, positive style of play is bringing on the overall standard of the team, and their two new coaches seem knowledgeable and keen to teach. Agreed. He was at Braidhurst last week with a Motherwell jacket on, so it seems true. A great move to get him back, in my opinion. I'm surprised at this, and not surprised, if you see what I mean. I'm surprised at the criticism of Scott. He is a passionate guy who has very strong ideas on how the game should be played and the level of effort he expects from boys in applying in a game what they have been taught at training, but I haven't found him to be unfair in what he says, and I feel he is starting the Academy along a route that will bring success in time. Sometimes honesty can be brutal, but if we are saying we want an Academy that produces players capable of playing in as tough an environment as first-team football, the boys have to learn to develop a thick skin, listen to what they are being told and try to take it on board and see how they can use it to sort what they, or their team, are doing wrong. I always told my boy that it's not necessarily a bad thing to be shouted at - if they didn't rate you, they wouldn't waste the time shouting at you! Not always easy to take when you're a young boy, I know, but it's part of the learning process if they want to survive later on at adult level. Where I'm not surprised is that parents are not happy - it is a difficult, agonising and paraniod existence being a parent of a boy in a Pro-Youth Academy, and it is hard to curb your protective urges when your wee boy (he's always your "wee boy", even when he's towering over you!) is being shouted at, criticised or not getting game time - believe me, I have been there many times, with the terror building up every six months as you approach the night when you are told if your son is being kept on or released. Emotions for Pro-Youth parents swing wildly but they usually do so according to whether their boy is getting game time or not, and whether the coach praises them or criticises them, so I have learnt (sometimes the hard way!) to take parents' complaints with a pinch of salt, keep my mouth shut when it's my boy getting it, and tell him to keep his head down and work his socks off and wait for things to come round better again.

Scott was down at training for the whole night last night, observing and talking to the coaches. I think it's a safe bet he#s started in the post, but I've no idea why the club haven't announced it.

More than a wee rumour. It's in today's Sun.

We have always had a Head of Youth Development. It was Chris McCart before Youngy and, I think, Davie McPartland before Chris. The role was combined with coaching the u19s and Youngy also helped out with the first team - basically his dedication to the club meant he was working a colossal number of hours and spreading himself thin. The reorganisation came with the SFA's new Academy system for youth development, one part of which decreed that the club's youth system should have an Academy Director who was not allowed to also fill the role of coaching the new u20s age group, as the 20s are full time and the u17s are the oldest age group in the youth system, or Academy as it's now known. This let him give the youth set-up his undivided attention, which could only be a good thing, and allowed him to personally take some of the training sessions for the teams to add his experience to that of the team coaches. Certainly, as far as that was concerned, all I can say is that "WishyWell Jnr" loved those sessions and thought he was a brilliant coach so, even if for no other reason, I wish him well in his new post.

He is Academy Director, in charge of the youth set-up from under-17s down to the youngest ones. The 20s are full-time, and are not part of the Academy.

The u17s squad was split to let half of them play the Wishaw game on Saturday and the other half play against Bathgate Thistle on Sunday. Although both Motherwell teams lost, they gave creditable performances continuing to play passing football from start to finish. Both were very young teams, the Sunday one featuring five 15-year olds, four of whom were on the pitch at any given time, and in the Wishaw Juniors game, Motherwell finished the game with nine of their outfield players being aged 15, five of whom played the full 90 minutes. Well done to both teams, who will have learnt a lot from the experience.

don't know if he's been mentioned before, but Motherwell Times saying today that we are "rumoured to be interested in Rotherham United winger Lionel Ainsworth, who spent the latter half of the season on loan at Aldershot Town."

True. Big Keith's not a bad fives player.

Just received. Well chuffed!