Celtic’s youth problem is not about the pathway. It’s about the structure.

Charlie Mulgrew has raised some interesting points about Celtic for once. Paulina wrote this morning about his criticism of the way John Kennedy was treated, and how Kennedy was isolated at the club under Paul Tisdale during that colossal reign of error. That was well worth the piece she did on it.

Where I find myself arguing with Mulgrew again is over Celtic’s academy issues.

I do not know where this misnomer comes from, that Celtic does not give academy players enough of a chance. It is not true. To be perfectly honest, it has never been true. Celtic has always graduated academy players into the first-team squad. Dane Murray is in the squad right now. That proves it. Colby Donovan is in the squad right now. That proves it too.

The caveat is simple. They have to be good enough.

Celtic is not a charity in a football sense. We do not just hand out opportunities to players who have not earned them.

Over the years, a number of players have left the academy whom Celtic did rate, did have plans for and did give opportunities to in the first-team squad. But that is exactly my point. It proves Celtic does offer a pathway to younger talent.

Ben Doak did get opportunities. He would have become a first-team regular. Rocco Vata was offered the chance to become a full member of the first-team squad. So too was Daniel Kelly. It is not Celtic’s fault that all of those players chose to leave and go south.

All of them portrayed that decision as being about football, as being about Celtic’s lack of a pathway.

But all three were already in the first-team squad when they left.

So I do not want to hear nonsense about there being no pathway. Those guys left for money. Fair enough. I just wish they were honest about it. I also wish others in the commentariat were honest about it.

In all three of those cases, Celtic recognised the talent. Celtic was ready to reward it with first-team football and new deals. By the point those players left, we had very little choice in the matter. Maybe deals should have been done sooner.

I have no argument with that at all.

But to claim Celtic did not recognise their talent, or was not ready to let that talent flourish in the first team, is a barefaced lie. I do not mind calling it that.

The reason we keep talking about those three is obvious. Celtic saw the value and the quality in them. Celtic was ready to give them a platform.

Now look at all the others who have left over the years claiming they never had a pathway. So tell me where we made the great mistake. Tell me where we let go of a major talent who then went elsewhere and proved himself to be a top player. Because, as I see it, most of those players faded into obscurity. That, in turn, vindicates Celtic’s decision not to make them part of the first-team set-up.

I really wish the people who keep pushing this line would do a little more homework before leaning into such a lazy narrative.

And then we come to the bigger contradiction. This is a Celtic board that does not want to spend one penny more than it has to. So are we really supposed to believe that this same board prefers to spend money on players rather than promote boys we have already spent years, and plenty of cash, developing?

That simply makes no sense.

After all, you can only cook with the ingredients you have. If you expect fillet mignon when the only thing in the fridge is a couple of pork chops, you are going to be disappointed.

More importantly, the entire academy system at Celtic is a mess. For a start, we have raging mediocrities running it. The coaching team in charge of the academy is not very good. On top of that, we have not embraced more modern European ideas. Instead, we still coach these kids as though the whole game revolves around pace and physicality. It does not. And, crucially, I do not see much evidence that we are producing pace or physicality either.

The academy system is a colossal white elephant at Celtic.

The fact that we choose to blood our youth in the Lowland League does not help. If we had thrown Lionel Messi into the Scottish Lowland League, the world would never have heard of him. Any player with real gifts would regress in that environment.

Celtic Park is making a lot of mistakes. But the idea that we have overlooked some golden generation is not one of them. That is simply not true.

I wish that golden generation existed. It does not.

I wish we had evidence that our academy could produce a golden generation. We do not.

We are doing everything wrong on one level or another. The problem is not that we do not provide a pathway. The problem is that nobody at Celtic is good enough to coach players to a standard where they can start walking down that road in the first place.

Until we fix that, we will not fix anything else.

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