Is the media trying to unsettle Lennon Miller? They’re doing their damndest to.

Today we’ve got the latest in a long line of articles about Lennon Miller; our media really is piling it all onto the shoulders of that guy, eah? Do they get that this lad is 18 and that he doesn’t need to be playing under this kind of pressure? Their latest was about EPL scouts who were allegedly watching him at the recent Scotland under 20’s game.

Part of this is about suggesting that we’re going to miss out on him of course, because even our clownish media knows that the Ibrox club isn’t going to be in the running once people start talking money. But more and more I think they should dampen some of this down and let this kid just focus on his football. There is no chance of that now.

The Record made sure to mention that Nils Koppen was there. He certainly wasn’t watching Miller; he too knows that they’ve not got a prayer of getting him.

He has been talking about trying to sign young players from other Scottish clubs, so the chances are that he was there watching one of them. And the EPL scouts? Well the opposition was France … what do you think the odds are that some of them have their eye on at least one member of that team?

I think Miller is a cracking young player, and he’s not being hyped for nothing.

But he’s still only 18 and that means there’s more potential here than anything else at the moment and we have no real way of knowing how he’ll cope on a bigger stage. This really is a lot to be piling on this guy’s shoulders; I know our media loves to build players up … they also enjoy taking them down and I hope Miller and his people remember that around these people.

He’ll get a move. He might not leave Motherwell in January but he’s probably not going to be there next season, and this is where he has to be careful about what he does and where he goes next. Does a move to England give him the sort of development he wants? Will he go down south for the money or will he want to play? Because if he goes to the EPL he needs to consider that he might spend a lot of time on the bench. The same applies at Celtic, of course.

It can’t be easy getting up every day and reading all this stuff in the media though. It’s easy for a kid to lose focus and get carried away. His dad, who spoke to the media during the week, seems very level headed; he should have a word with some of the hacks and get them to back up a bit instead of trying to manufacture a story every day of the week.

It’s not long until January, and in January what will be will be.

Clubs will either come in or they won’t, and then he and the club will have a decision to make. Right now it’s all nothing but speculation, and whilst I’m sure there will be offers (and that Celtic will make one of them) it’s not something that the hacks should be obsessing over. I do think it’s pretty shocking that this is another case of them seeming almost desperate to move a cracking young player down south … it’s our press as much as anything which makes it difficult for our clubs to retain quality youth talents.

They are forever advertising that over-bloated league down there, as though it were the only one in Europe. Living in the shadow of the EPL is bad enough, but they are never done reminding us of it. That’s why Nicolas Kuhn’s agent had to speak out this week, because they just aren’t going to stop linking him with a move south of the border.

It’s the same with this boy here. Scouts were at the Scotland-France youth game. So what?

There were, at a minimum, 21 other players involved in that game not including the subs. They have no idea who those scouts were there watching. It’s a complete non-story which they turned into one, and in doing so you’d almost swear they were working overtime to unsettle this kid and move him on. It’s shocking.