Scotland squad euro 2020

[HuttonDressedAsLahm]

Interesting infographic from The Athletic.

We have a slightly below average age of all the countries in the Euros, but the most inexperienced by a distance.  

(Of note, Wikipedia suggests the average age is 27.5, but drops to 26.5 if you remove our goalkeepers).

The below would amplify the criticism of a failure to bring through new players earlier, as we end up with a experienced squad by age, but inexperienced by caps.

That said, you'd imagine by 2024, a significant increase in our average cap numbers.

[craigkillie]

If you just looked at our outfield players you'd see a massive shift down and to the left too. Our three goalkeepers are the oldest players in the squad.

[HuttonDressedAsLahm]

18 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

If you just looked at our outfield players you'd see a massive shift down and to the left too. Our three goalkeepers are the oldest players in the squad.

Outfield average = 15.  Total average = 18.

Our most capped player in 23 years is Darren Fletcher on 80.  By the tournament start, Belgium will have 8 players on at least that level... Incredible really.

[forameus]

Caps will get slightly skewed by tournament appearances.  Even if you're a Group Stage jobber, that could be anything from 15-20 caps over a career for a player.  

But of course, there's a lot more to it than that.  The highest cap totals will be for players who were brilliant at an early age and have had sustained quality putting  them above other options for most of their career.  We rarely promote a player from the youth groups early, we rarely have anyone that seems good enough to do so, and no-one has really matured into being a must-pick at a late age (and if they have, it's rarely combined with getting caps earlier in his career).

The likes of Gilmour will likely get stupid numbers of caps.  Robertson and Tierney will end up on high totals too. 

[Hursty]

4 minutes ago, forameus said:

Caps will get slightly skewed by tournament appearances.  Even if you're a Group Stage jobber, that could be anything from 15-20 caps over a career for a player.  

But of course, there's a lot more to it than that.  The highest cap totals will be for players who were brilliant at an early age and have had sustained quality putting  them above other options for most of their career.  We rarely promote a player from the youth groups early, we rarely have anyone that seems good enough to do so, and no-one has really matured into being a must-pick at a late age (and if they have, it's rarely combined with getting caps earlier in his career).

The likes of Gilmour will likely get stupid numbers of caps.  Robertson and Tierney will end up on high totals too. 

Yeah pretty much this.   A combination of not many becoming squad regulars until they are 23/24 or so, a lack of tournament appearances and generally treating friendlies (pre nations league) with total disdain all contribute to low cap numbers.   

 

Edit:  plus a few injuries to certain players.  Craig Gordon and Darren Fletcher two that spring to mind that would have had much higher numbers had they not had massive lay offs. 

Edited June 4, 2021 by Hursty

[forameus]

Yeah, the friendlies part too, as it's only recently we've essentially been forced into them.  From now on, if you've got a regular who stays fit, they'll be playing at least 16 games a cycle just with Nations League, Qualifying (and any friendlies to fit in the gaps).  Even without tournaments (which hopefully we'll at least participate in every Euros, if not World Cups) that'll likely be 100+ caps for the likes of Gilmour alone.  Tierney, barring calamity, will surely beat the record of 102.

[HalfCutNinja]

10 minutes ago, forameus said:

Caps will get slightly skewed by tournament appearances.  Even if you're a Group Stage jobber, that could be anything from 15-20 caps over a career for a player.  

But of course, there's a lot more to it than that.  The highest cap totals will be for players who were brilliant at an early age and have had sustained quality putting  them above other options for most of their career.  We rarely promote a player from the youth groups early, we rarely have anyone that seems good enough to do so, and no-one has really matured into being a must-pick at a late age (and if they have, it's rarely combined with getting caps earlier in his career).

The likes of Gilmour will likely get stupid numbers of caps.  Robertson and Tierney will end up on high totals too. 

We still do it far too late and are too conservative about it. Robertson is 27 and has 45 caps that's honking. He should have 60 or 70 by now.

Gilmour should at worst have been in the squad in March and have a couple by now.

[HuttonDressedAsLahm]

2 hours ago, HalfCutNinja said:

We still do it far too late and are too conservative about it. Robertson is 27 and has 45 caps that's honking. He should have 60 or 70 by now.

Gilmour should at worst have been in the squad in March and have a couple by now.

Exactly this.  At last count, Wales have something like 60+ caps of players aged 21 or under.  Up until this last week, Scotland had zero.

We cap players relatively late in their careers. 

• Armstrong: 25 (2017)
• McGregor: 23 (2017)
• Christie: 22 (2017)
• Fraser: 23 (2017)
• O'Donnell: 26 (2018)
• McGinn: 21 (2016)

These are core players in our squad, who didn't just appear out of the woodwork in 2016-2017, but our previous team had fallen apart and we spent the next 2-3 years building from scratch again.

It's the failure to succession plan to any reasonable standard that has continuously caused us problems.  I may be wrong, but out of the whole squad (and minus this week), only Tierney, Robertson, and David Marshall were capped as teenagers.

Our players have a low number of caps, not because we don't qualify for tournaments (that has a small impact, but it doesn't justify why other countries in our position don't have the same inexperience), but because we have continuous four-year cycles of players aged 26-30 who only appear in the squad once they are established, with only a few notable exceptions along the way.

It's to be celebrated that Patterson, Gilmour, and Turnbull are all making the squad now, and in fairness, I don't see any obvious 18-21-year-old players knocking on the door - but that is mostly down to the fact our best prospects are in the team, and the standard of the existing team is at a significantly higher level than it has since at least 2006-2007 (and even then, this side arguably consists of better players).

 

Edited June 4, 2021 by HuttonDressedAsLahm

[craigkillie]

39 minutes ago, HuttonDressedAsLahm said:

Exactly this.  At last count, Wales have something like 60+ caps of players aged 21 or under.  Up until this last week, Scotland had zero.

We cap players relatively late in their careers. 

• Armstrong: 25 (2017)
• McGregor: 23 (2017)
• Christie: 22 (2017)
• Fraser: 23 (2017)
• O'Donnell: 26 (2018)
• McGinn: 21 (2016)

These are core players in our squad, who didn't just appear out of the woodwork in 2016-2017, but our previous team had fallen apart and we spent the next 2-3 years building from scratch again.

It's the failure to succession plan to any reasonable standard that has continuously caused us problems.  I may be wrong, but out of the whole squad (and minus this week), only Tierney, Robertson, and David Marshall were capped as teenagers.

Our players have a low number of caps, not because we don't qualify for tournaments (that has a small impact, but it doesn't justify why other countries in our position don't have the same inexperience), but because we have continuous four-year cycles of players aged 26-30 who only appear in the squad once they are established, with only a few notable exceptions along the way.

It's to be celebrated that Patterson, Gilmour, and Turnbull are all making the squad now, and in fairness, I don't see any obvious 18-21-year-old players knocking on the door - but that is mostly down to the fact our best prospects are in the team, and the standard of the existing team is at a significantly higher level than it has since at least 2006-2007 (and even then, this side arguably consists of better players).

 

O'Donnell was playing in the Championship until he was 22 and only really became a realistic prospect for the Scotland team until about two months before he got capped, so I'd say he literally did appear out of the woodwork. McGregor didn't break into the Celtic team until he was 21, and McGinn was playing in the Championship when he got his debut, albeit having already impressed for St Mirren in the top flight before their relegation.

The problem with aftertiming like this is that it is very easy to look at someone's career in hindsight and say "how did we not cap them sooner", but I'm not sure that any of the guys you listed above would have been highlighted as absolute clear future Scotland internationals at the age of 19, certainly not the way Gilmour or Patterson would have been. Fraser and Armstrong were probably the two most likely ones, but the former basically disappeared into the English lower leagues as a teenager. You can dig up almost any thread from years ago and look at the young guys being proposed to see how difficult it is to get right.

Hanley was capped as a teenager in the current squad too btw. At a similar time we also chucked caps at Danny Wilson and Steven Saunders as teenagers, with Wilson of course being partly culpable for our elimination from Euro 2012.

If I'm looking at current Scottish teenager who are likely to have a future in the national team, I'd say Gilmour, Patterson and Hickey are the only ones I'd be pretty certain of. Then you can point at the likes of Doig who would have more of a chance if he wans't a left-back. After that you've got the two boys at Bayern and Liam Smith at Man City, but it's pure guesswork with them because I haven't seen them play.

[HuttonDressedAsLahm]

7 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

O'Donnell was playing in the Championship until he was 22 and only really became a realistic prospect for the Scotland team until about two months before he got capped, so I'd say he literally did appear out of the woodwork. McGregor didn't break into the Celtic team until he was 21, and McGinn was playing in the Championship when he got his debut, albeit having already impressed for St Mirren in the top flight before their relegation.

The problem with aftertiming like this is that it is very easy to look at someone's career in hindsight and say "how did we not cap them sooner", but I'm not sure that any of the guys you listed above would have been highlighted as absolute clear future Scotland internationals at the age of 19, certainly not the way Gilmour or Patterson would have been. Fraser and Armstrong were probably the two most likely ones, but the former basically disappeared into the English lower leagues as a teenager. You can dig up almost any thread from years ago and look at the young guys being proposed to see how difficult it is to get right.

Hanley was capped as a teenager in the current squad too btw. At a similar time we also chucked caps at Danny Wilson and Steven Saunders as teenagers, with Wilson of course being partly culpable for our elimination from Euro 2012.

If I'm looking at current Scottish teenager who are likely to have a future in the national team, I'd say Gilmour, Patterson and Hickey are the only ones I'd be pretty certain of. Then you can point at the likes of Doig who would have more of a chance if he wans't a left-back. After that you've got the two boys at Bayern and Liam Smith at Man City, but it's pure guesswork with them because I haven't seen them play.

The very obvious riposte to that point is what is Scotland doing so wrong that everyone else is doing correctly?

On a case-by-case basis it's very easy to determine that specific players 'were not ready at 18-21', so it's not particularly useful.  Therefore, the larger picture needs to be reviewed and that's where the problem becomes fairly obvious.

The best outcome is having (relatively) experienced young players, whilst the worst position is having inexperienced older players.  We have been well within the latter over the last decade, are only now making our way back across that spectrum.

As for Ryan Fraser, he was getting rave reviews in the Championship at the same time that Anya was getting games playing for a similar side at the same level.  Again, we could get into the merits of individual players, but the result is what matters.  We suffer from inexperience, whilst other nations - even those at the same level as us - somehow don't suffer the same problems.  Either our players aren't good enough early enough, or we fail to nurture talent, or we fail to identify it, or we simply choose not to.  

[HalfCutNinja]

2 hours ago, HuttonDressedAsLahm said:

Exactly this.  At last count, Wales have something like 60+ caps of players aged 21 or under.  Up until this last week, Scotland had zero.

We cap players relatively late in their careers. 

• Armstrong: 25 (2017)
• McGregor: 23 (2017)
• Christie: 22 (2017)
• Fraser: 23 (2017)
• O'Donnell: 26 (2018)
• McGinn: 21 (2016)

These are core players in our squad, who didn't just appear out of the woodwork in 2016-2017, but our previous team had fallen apart and we spent the next 2-3 years building from scratch again.

It's the failure to succession plan to any reasonable standard that has continuously caused us problems.  I may be wrong, but out of the whole squad (and minus this week), only Tierney, Robertson, and David Marshall were capped as teenagers.

Our players have a low number of caps, not because we don't qualify for tournaments (that has a small impact, but it doesn't justify why other countries in our position don't have the same inexperience), but because we have continuous four-year cycles of players aged 26-30 who only appear in the squad once they are established, with only a few notable exceptions along the way.

It's to be celebrated that Patterson, Gilmour, and Turnbull are all making the squad now, and in fairness, I don't see any obvious 18-21-year-old players knocking on the door - but that is mostly down to the fact our best prospects are in the team, and the standard of the existing team is at a significantly higher level than it has since at least 2006-2007 (and even then, this side arguably consists of better players).

 

Good post, but I actually don't agree about Turnbull. He should have been getting capped immediately in his breakthrough season at Motherwell, he was obviously going to be a Scotland player so get him in get him experience. That's what other countries do.

I  was also appalled that Gilmour got ten minutes against the Dutch. That's a farce, that was the perfect opportunity to give him a good run at least half an hour but more likely longer. The fact he got ten minutes shows he's an afterthought and not trusted yet. It was a token gesture. So I wouldn't expect him to feature much in the tournament, despite the fact he's a better player than McGregor right now.

Patterson will get the same on Sunday and watch the tournament from the stands, when he's a better player than O'Donnell right now too.

[HalfCutNinja]

1 hour ago, craigkillie said:

O'Donnell was playing in the Championship until he was 22 and only really became a realistic prospect for the Scotland team until about two months before he got capped, so I'd say he literally did appear out of the woodwork. McGregor didn't break into the Celtic team until he was 21, and McGinn was playing in the Championship when he got his debut, albeit having already impressed for St Mirren in the top flight before their relegation.

The problem with aftertiming like this is that it is very easy to look at someone's career in hindsight and say "how did we not cap them sooner", but I'm not sure that any of the guys you listed above would have been highlighted as absolute clear future Scotland internationals at the age of 19, certainly not the way Gilmour or Patterson would have been. Fraser and Armstrong were probably the two most likely ones, but the former basically disappeared into the English lower leagues as a teenager. You can dig up almost any thread from years ago and look at the young guys being proposed to see how difficult it is to get right.

Hanley was capped as a teenager in the current squad too btw. At a similar time we also chucked caps at Danny Wilson and Steven Saunders as teenagers, with Wilson of course being partly culpable for our elimination from Euro 2012.

If I'm looking at current Scottish teenager who are likely to have a future in the national team, I'd say Gilmour, Patterson and Hickey are the only ones I'd be pretty certain of. Then you can point at the likes of Doig who would have more of a chance if he wans't a left-back. After that you've got the two boys at Bayern and Liam Smith at Man City, but it's pure guesswork with them because I haven't seen them play.

You're such a company man. This is why we've been shit for so long, mindsets like this. You should apply for a job with the SFA, they'd fuckin love you there.

[eez-eh]

17 minutes ago, HalfCutNinja said:

Good post, but I actually don't agree about Turnbull. He should have been getting capped immediately in his breakthrough season at Motherwell, he was obviously going to be a Scotland player so get him in get him experience. That's what other countries do.

I  was also appalled that Gilmour got ten minutes against the Dutch. That's a farce, that was the perfect opportunity to give him a good run at least half an hour but more likely longer. The fact he got ten minutes shows he's an afterthought and not trusted yet. It was a token gesture. So I wouldn't expect him to feature much in the tournament, despite the fact he's a better player than McGregor right now.

Patterson will get the same on Sunday and watch the tournament from the stands, when he's a better player than O'Donnell right now too.

I’d have liked Gilmour to get more time but in fairness to Clarke he hadn’t even trained with team. I think he near enough stepped off the plane and into the stadium.

I’d wait and see how much time he gets against Luxembourg. Personally I’d start him.

[HalfCutNinja]

3 minutes ago, eez-eh said:

I’d have liked Gilmour to get more time but in fairness to Clarke he hadn’t even trained with team. I think he near enough stepped off the plane and into the stadium.

I’d wait and see how much time he gets against Luxembourg. Personally I’d start him.

I seriously doubt it, he is an afterthought. It doesn't matter how much he's trained, the kids fuckin world class, you could wake him up in the middle of the night and throw him into the middle of an El Clasico and he'd stroll it. 

That was a brilliant opportunity to get a good look at him and give him good experience. What are you going to learn about him against Luxembourg?  They're fuckin shite. Its just so typical Scotland. If it wasn't for injuries he wouldn't even be in the squad.

[No_Problemo]

6 minutes ago, HalfCutNinja said:

I seriously doubt it, he is an afterthought. It doesn't matter how much he's trained, the kids fuckin world class, you could wake him up in the middle of the night and throw him into the middle of an El Clasico and he'd stroll it. 

That was a brilliant opportunity to get a good look at him and give him good experience. What are you going to learn about him against Luxembourg?  They're fuckin shite. Its just so typical Scotland. If it wasn't for injuries he wouldn't even be in the squad.

Of course it matters how much he has trained. He hasn’t completed a single session with the team, and wasn’t even meant to take any part the other night. He is clearly very talented, however had had no input in terms of the set up of the side - that isn’t the best way to integrate a young player into a new side. I’m sure he will get more game time on Sunday.

[HalfCutNinja]

1 minute ago, No_Problemo said:

Of course it matters how much he has trained. He hasn’t completed a single session with the team, and wasn’t even meant to take any part the other night. He is clearly very talented, however had had no input in terms of the set up of the side - that isn’t the best way to integrate a young player into a new side. I’m sure he will get more game time on Sunday.

Pish, he's played football before. Are you suggesting if you had Xavi or Messi you'd have been reluctant to give them more game time cause they had barely trained with the team?  Good players suss these things out in five minutes. 

[ewan14]

3 hours ago, craigkillie said:

O'Donnell was playing in the Championship until he was 22 and only really became a realistic prospect for the Scotland team until about two months before he got capped, so I'd say he literally did appear out of the woodwork. McGregor didn't break into the Celtic team until he was 21, and McGinn was playing in the Championship when he got his debut, albeit having already impressed for St Mirren in the top flight before their relegation.

The problem with aftertiming like this is that it is very easy to look at someone's career in hindsight and say "how did we not cap them sooner", but I'm not sure that any of the guys you listed above would have been highlighted as absolute clear future Scotland internationals at the age of 19, certainly not the way Gilmour or Patterson would have been. Fraser and Armstrong were probably the two most likely ones, but the former basically disappeared into the English lower leagues as a teenager. You can dig up almost any thread from years ago and look at the young guys being proposed to see how difficult it is to get right.

Hanley was capped as a teenager in the current squad too btw. At a similar time we also chucked caps at Danny Wilson and Steven Saunders as teenagers, with Wilson of course being partly culpable for our elimination from Euro 2012.

If I'm looking at current Scottish teenager who are likely to have a future in the national team, I'd say Gilmour, Patterson and Hickey are the only ones I'd be pretty certain of. Then you can point at the likes of Doig who would have more of a chance if he wans't a left-back. After that you've got the two boys at Bayern and Liam Smith at Man City, but it's pure guesswork with them because I haven't seen them play.

As per youth teams discussion thread Liam Smith featured on MOTDx bbc wonderkids challenge

[Bing.McCrosby]

2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

O'Donnell was playing in the Championship until he was 22 and only really became a realistic prospect for the Scotland team until about two months before he got capped, so I'd say he literally did appear out of the woodwork. McGregor didn't break into the Celtic team until he was 21, and McGinn was playing in the Championship when he got his debut, albeit having already impressed for St Mirren in the top flight before their relegation.

The problem with aftertiming like this is that it is very easy to look at someone's career in hindsight and say "how did we not cap them sooner", but I'm not sure that any of the guys you listed above would have been highlighted as absolute clear future Scotland internationals at the age of 19, certainly not the way Gilmour or Patterson would have been. Fraser and Armstrong were probably the two most likely ones, but the former basically disappeared into the English lower leagues as a teenager. You can dig up almost any thread from years ago and look at the young guys being proposed to see how difficult it is to get right.

Hanley was capped as a teenager in the current squad too btw. At a similar time we also chucked caps at Danny Wilson and Steven Saunders as teenagers, with Wilson of course being partly culpable for our elimination from Euro 2012.

If I'm looking at current Scottish teenager who are likely to have a future in the national team, I'd say Gilmour, Patterson and Hickey are the only ones I'd be pretty certain of. Then you can point at the likes of Doig who would have more of a chance if he wans't a left-back. After that you've got the two boys at Bayern and Liam Smith at Man City, but it's pure guesswork with them because I haven't seen them play.

Its good to know that no scotland manager has made a mistake. And every player was capped at exactly the right time. 

Thats why we have been a top team for decades.

[Gordopolis]

O'Donnell was playing in the Championship until he was 22 and only really became a realistic prospect for the Scotland team until about two months before he got capped, so I'd say he literally did appear out of the woodwork. McGregor didn't break into the Celtic team until he was 21, and McGinn was playing in the Championship when he got his debut, albeit having already impressed for St Mirren in the top flight before their relegation.
The problem with aftertiming like this is that it is very easy to look at someone's career in hindsight and say "how did we not cap them sooner", but I'm not sure that any of the guys you listed above would have been highlighted as absolute clear future Scotland internationals at the age of 19, certainly not the way Gilmour or Patterson would have been. Fraser and Armstrong were probably the two most likely ones, but the former basically disappeared into the English lower leagues as a teenager. You can dig up almost any thread from years ago and look at the young guys being proposed to see how difficult it is to get right.
Hanley was capped as a teenager in the current squad too btw. At a similar time we also chucked caps at Danny Wilson and Steven Saunders as teenagers, with Wilson of course being partly culpable for our elimination from Euro 2012.
If I'm looking at current Scottish teenager who are likely to have a future in the national team, I'd say Gilmour, Patterson and Hickey are the only ones I'd be pretty certain of. Then you can point at the likes of Doig who would have more of a chance if he wans't a left-back. After that you've got the two boys at Bayern and Liam Smith at Man City, but it's pure guesswork with them because I haven't seen them play.

Bit harsh on Wilson - it was a blatant dive from the Czech chap that cost us that win.

[Dunning1874]

3 hours ago, HuttonDressedAsLahm said:

The best outcome is having (relatively) experienced young players, whilst the worst position is having inexperienced older players. 

Well no, the worst outcome you end up with is that you've picked players due to their youth on the basis of giving them experience, however they actually turn out to be considerably worse than your best players and you have poorer results as a consequence, while young players suffer for being thrown in to get pumped if they aren't good enough yet.

There absolutely have been examples of managers not trusting players due to their youth and it's right that that's criticised when it happens, for example Strachan picking Whittaker, Mulgrew and even Craig Forsyth ahead of Robertson when it was already apparent to anyone with a clue that Robertson was comfortably the best left back available to us, even if no one was talking about him becoming world class then. It was appalling management and there was no explanation for it other than Robertson's age. He was clearly good enough and should have been starting every game. That genuinely should have cost Strachan his job, as I sincerely believe we'd have made the playoffs in those 2016 qualifiers without those choices.

I don't think anyone's saying that there's no problem here, but it's not as simple as saying 'start capping players at 18' then seeing them all magically turn into world class players by virtue of having 15 more caps than if they'd first been capped at 21. As a general rule nations will cap players at a younger age if they've already demonstrated that they're good enough at that younger age, hence Eden Hazard being capped at 17 because he had already made himself an established first team footballer at a good level at 17, standing out as an excellent player in Ligue 1.

On the other hand, chucking Stephen O'Donnell into the Scotland squad when he was 19 wouldn't have been a good idea, because he was getting his first experience of first team football in a side finishing 6th in the Scottish second tier and showing no indication he'd become a Scotland player one day. Kevin Nisbet getting his first Scotland cap at 24 rather than 20 or 21 isn't a failure on the part of any Scotland managers, it's the entirely reasonable and natural consequence of Nisbet's career to date. Calling him up at 21 when he was embarrassing himself as one of the worst players in a Dumbarton team being relegated from the Championship would have been the most ridiculous decision a Scotland manager has ever made.

Excellent international players have so many caps having started so young because they'd already made it obvious how good they were at a young age, not the other way round: they didn't become good just because they were capped young to give it a try. Hazard, Kylian Mbappe, Aaron Ramsey - they were obviously already among the best players available to their country as teenagers. Stephen O'Donnell and Callum McGregor were not.

There's a risk of baby out with the bathwater here. You can ask if there's a deeper issue with youth development in Scotland that the wrong players are being identified in age grade footballers or if there's a reason some players are relatively late developers, but the solution is not to say that we should just launch everyone who's highly rated at 18 in for a cap and see if they sink or swim. If you get a genuine once in a generation talent like Gilmour that's a different discussion, but we have moved quickly with him - he's been capped at 19 having played only 22 first team games. He's not established as a first team footballer yet but because he looks so good, he's in the squad for a tournament. Same with positions where we're weaker, where Patterson has been given a call up despite having g so little experience as the only alternative was a known mediocrity like Palmer anyway.

We had this issue in 2018 qualifying, when fingers were being pointed at Berra and Mulgrew as being too old. We should have had a younger centre back partnership, a bit of succession planning for the future, not old duds like them and others who'd failed before like Russell Martin and, er, Grant Hanley, who was all of 26 years old at the time. It's almost as if players aren't given slack if they're called up as teenagers and are pish at first due to not being ready!

It was all very well to say that we should have phased Berra and Mulgrew out sooner with hindsight, but look at the younger centre backs who've been capped since that campaign. When it started Jack Hendry was dossing about in England's League One on loan having failing to get a game for his relegation battling Championship club. John Souttar was looking the inferior player beside Berra at club level. The highest level David Bates had played was the Scottish Championship, where he failed to break into the Raith team and had loan spells with East Stirling and Brechin. Scott McKenna couldn't get a game for Ayr United.

So if you said then that we need to throw these older guys like Berra and Mulgrew in the bin to ensure our best young talent gets some experience now so they aren't being capped too late, you want our highest rated young centre backs at the time thrown straight in to stand them in good stead to be solid international centre backs for years to come. You look to the centre backs getting the most games for the under 21s at the time, and you have Jordan McGhee, Zak Jules and Joe Chalmers.

Would anyone be better off if we'd given Jordan McGhee two or three caps as a 19 year old? Would it have turned McGhee into a credible international centre back, rather than the average Championship centre back/good Championship midfielder he's become? Would Scotland have had better results by putting an obviously inferior player in the side?

No, obviously not. You pick your best players. Where obviously talented youngsters are being ignored due to their age in the way Robertson was even after getting his first cap then that should be called out and criticised, but I think people massively overstate how often this happens.