I was interested last night to see that the Ibrox club sent one of their young players, one of their decent ones, Alex Lowry, out on loan. He has gone to Hearts.
As one of Ibrox’s more promising young players, it shows you how much faith they have in their own academy progress, which is to say none. But it also strengthens one of our SPFL opponents, and that is part of the reason why they’ve done it of course.
We sent a couple of our boys out last season to SPFL clubs, and they played matches against the Ibrox team. Scales scored that wonder goal against them.
Adam Montgomery had less luck when he came up against them, but I like the concept and I was arguing for it last year. Ibrox clearly sees that it has value and merit, and they’re right for once.
I wouldn’t be against seeing Scales go back to Pittodrie, but they can whistle if they think they are going to get him on a permanent deal. It would have been good, if he was fit, to send Mikey Johnston somewhere like Hibs; that would have been smart.
It’s at times like these I really do wish we had some great young up and coming striker we could loan out, confident that he would raise his game in matches against them.
Our backup players are generally good enough to start in most other SPFL sides, and I love the idea of us fortifying those sides with our best young talent.
So I hope this is being thought about, and especially in what might be a close title race. I hope we send at least a few of our guys out to our fellow Premiership sides.
I said it last year and we saw how well Scales did. Our academy elite can either learn in the lower reaches of the pyramid or they can learn in the top flight; I know where I’d prefer them to be.
And if one of them scores a crucial goal against the Ibrox operation … well, that’s good in more ways than one. We need to be thinking along these lines.