Youth System

I miss the days when we used to bring through our own players. We must have had some system to produce the likes of Snodgrass, Dorrans, Griffiths, Davidson, McNulty, Halliday, Scougall, Mullen, Jacobs, Donaldson etc

Mind you we never really cashed in on any of them allowing their contracts to run down and only getting a development fee. We weren't savvy enough.

A lot of them were at other clubs before we got them though, Griffiths was at Hibs i think, Halliday and Dorrans at Rangers, Snoddy was at a boy's team affiliated to Rangers and opted for us when Celtic youth team were interested in him, Mullen was at Aberdeen, Scougall Hibs and Dunfermline.

So basically we got other teams youth players and developed them more at Livi, spending time and money doing so, for very little return when they moved on, compared to getting other teams young players like Dykes, Anderson, Forrest, Penrice, Fitzwater, Boyes, Halkett, Liam Kelly etc, get some good years out of them playing in our first team and make a few quid out of some of them.

Dykes being more than a few quid, and Anderson should get us a good bit too when he moves on, so will Fitzwater if he goes during the closed season. I know which i prefer.

Martindale has a good eye for young talented players, and has done pretty well out of pinching other teams talented youngsters, we've a decent record of giving them a chance at Livi, and the opportunity to move on to other teams, we're doing alright without our own youth production line. We have set it back up again though, a requirement for European qualification, but hopefully we see some of them coming up into our first team. Hamilton is still a youth product and still hasn't broken through, so hopefully he'll be the first to do so since we shut our youth teams down and started them back up again.