As Daniel Kelly becomes the latest Celtic starlet to be frozen out of the first-team fold amid ongoing contract negotiations, there's a growing worry among some facets of the support that the club has entered an unwanted cycle.   

The issues with youth development in Scotland are widespread and cannot be laid at the door of any football establishment, even the biggest of them. 

But given that reshuffle behind the scenes at Lennoxtown and the ongoing contract disputes that have endured in recent weeks, months and years, it seems an opportune moment to examine just what it is that the Celtic academy is looking to achieve.

Celtic must offer pathway after Kelly becomes latest concern

(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group)
What is it the academy hopes to achieve, then? Is it to produce players for the Celtic first team? Because if that is the ultimate goal, then there is no escaping the fact that it has long failed to do so. Captain Callum McGregor and James Forrest came through the ranks to be mainstays of the side, of course, but they are both now the wrong side of 30.

Kieran Tierney made the club a bucketload of cash after some hugely successful seasons in the team, but he left five years ago next month.

After that? Well, Mikey Johnston has floated around the periphery for an eternity. He is now 25 and comes back to the club this summer after a successful loan spell at West Brom. If he was ever going to be a Celtic regular, surely it would have happened by now. A fresh start would be best for all parties.

Stephen Welsh? The defender is now 24 and has made just 66 appearances for Celtic in his entire career. Anthony Ralston is a dependable if unspectacular deputy at right back. It’s not a great return, no matter how you slice it.

Is it the coaching? Chris McCart, long-time head of the academy, is a respected operator within the game. Beneath him, former Celtic players are everywhere you look.

Jonny Hayes is the latest to join up as B team coach, under B team manager Stephen McManus. Darren O’Dea is now the club’s Professional Pathways Manager.

This is not to necessarily say that these men aren’t the right ones for these jobs, but there is no escaping the whiff of ‘jobs for the boys’ around such appointments, as accomplished as these coaches may be. If you keep doing the same things, and all that.

Celtic are of course stuck between something of a rock and a hard place these days. Since Brexit, especially, English Premier League clubs who were once able to hoover up the best of the young talent across the continent are now paying much closer attention to prospects on home soil.

They obviously have much deeper pockets than the biggest clubs north of the border, and as soon as a truly outstanding prospect emerges, they are invariably lured down south. It happened with Billy Gilmour at Rangers before it happened with Ben Doak at Celtic, and the elite young players will continue to be picked off.

That leaves Celtic with the rest. Players who may well be of a decent level, but are they really of the standard to make a difference for the Celtic first team?

Time will tell in the case of the likes of Rocco Vata, who swapped Glasgow for Watford this summer in frustration at a lack of first team opportunities. Kelly looks to be going the same way. The question is, as much as these youngsters have to earn an opportunity, is the onus on Brendan Rodgers – or whatever Celtic manager is in situ – to trust them a little more?

It is far too simplistic an argument to say that the likes of Lamine Yamal, tearing it up for Barcelona and Spain having just turned 17 the day before he picked up a winner’s medal at the Euros, would not get a sniff in Scotland, as I’ve heard many a time over the past two weeks.

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Nonsense. If there was a player of that level in any academy in this country, the only way he wouldn’t be playing here is because he would already have been snaffled by one of the superclubs.

But there is certainly a case to say that many of Celtic's youngsters, who often find themselves logjammed behind some pretty mediocre imports that clog up the Celtic squad, don’t reach their full potential because they aren’t being given enough opportunities at first team level at an early stage of their careers. And no, turning out for the B team in the Lowland League is not the same thing.

With the greatest of respect, would it have been too much of a risk to throw in Kelly ahead of, say, Tomoki Iwata against a Livingston, Ross County or St Johnstone? Would Vata have managed to match the creative output of say, Nicolas Kuhn, who got three goals and three assists across 14 league appearances since arriving for £3m in January? We’ll never know.

In fairness to the Celtic manager, he sees these players every day in training, and he is correct to say that pulling on a Celtic jersey is a privilege to be earned, rather than the right of any player who has come through the academy set-up. But surely there has to be an established pathway for young players to follow?

The deeper they get into their careers and as they even edge towards retirement, it is getting harder and harder to hold up McGregor or Forrest as the poster boys for what a young player at Celtic can achieve.

Beyond the elite facilities you would have access to, why would any promising young player out there join the club? It’s getting harder to argue it is with a view to actually playing for Celtic. And it must be getting harder for the club to sell that dream.