When Joe Savage made the shock decision to step down as sporting director of Hearts last summer, he said he did so with his head held high.
The decisions he made while at the club, he felt, were not only made with the best interests of Hearts in mind for the there and then, but he was also certain that they would bear fruit in the longer term.
This season, following the release of the Scottish FA’s extensive report into the ‘transition phase’, the development of young Scottish players has been a hot button issue. Stark and depressing statistics have been circulated outlining the lack of opportunities for Scots under the age of 21 in our top league, with minutes offered to young players here lagging far behind comparable countries across the continent.
But amid that backdrop of doom and gloom when it comes to the development of Scottish prospects, Savage has spotted some green shoots of hope. And, he feels, a statistic that vindicates his and Hearts CEO Andrew McKinlay’s push to take the Tynecastle club’s approach to player development in a different direction almost three years ago now.
Of the 10 Scottish under-21 players with the most minutes in the Scottish topflight this season, five of them - Lewis Neilson, Makenzie Kirk (now of St Johnstone), Aidan Denholm, James Wilson and Adam Forrester - have not only come through the Hearts academy system, but have played for their B team in the Lowland League.
Proof, Savage argues, that the club’s B team is a valuable staging post in the development of players.
“That is what I would call the master plan,” Savage said.
“When we sat down, myself and Andrew McKinlay, we had that vision in place, and both of us thought that it could really benefit our boys.
“Then the B team would play that way, and the first team would play that way, and then Steven Naismith carried that on when he went on to become the first team manager.
“He wanted the B team to play that way so then when one was called upon to step up, they were ready to go right in and adapt to the training first of all, you need to see how they train, and then when you go into that environment you hope that they're ready.
“And if you don't think they're quite ready then that's where a loan can come in. But certainly from our perspective at Hearts, it did massively benefit us having the B team there. There's absolutely no doubt.
“We've wanted to develop young players, and we felt this is the way forward for us as a club. I was a massive advocate of it. The gap is too big for me between 18s football and the first team, and I thought it would benefit the players because we'll have good coaches, we'll be playing against tough opponents, we'll be playing against all the elements.
“At the time I said, ‘I'm telling you right now, the players will thrive, they'll develop in this environment’, and as you can see now, there is proof that it has worked.
"It's clearly proof, because they're now playing, and we have quite a few established names that have come through that pathway.
“Aidan Denholm's played for Scotland under 21s, Lewis Neilson's played for Scotland under 21s, James Wilson's getting interest from quite a few international teams, but he’ll hopefully play for Scotland, as I would imagine Adam Forrester would be too. Macaulay Tait has been in the Scotland 19s and Finlay Pollock’s always been in and around the international setup.
“So, we felt it definitely benefitted us, and the proof is in the pudding. You look at the minutes they've played in the Premiership, not even the Championship, the Premiership in Scotland, and that tells you that what we were doing is working.
“You can never guarantee that they're going to go on and play a hundred games for Hearts, but I think if you can give them a better chance, more exposure to competitive football, and help them to process what we were actually needing from them to become Hearts first team players, then they will surely have a better chance of doing that.”
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The inclusion of B teams in Scottish football, while prevalent and established in some other European countries, is a controversial subject.
Critics have cited concerns about sporting integrity in the lower leagues, with their presence anathema to traditionalists, who argue they fly in the face of the proud and longstanding competitive traditions of the Scottish game.
Over and above that, there is an argument that a promising player’s development would be aided more by being exposed to first team football at a higher level. Savage acknowledges that some players may be ready for that environment sooner than others, but he is also convinced that without the B team, others who may be ‘late bloomers’ would otherwise be lost to the game.
So, while his own and Hearts’ motives in starting their B team were not, he admits, entirely altruistic, he does believe that their presence is to the overall benefit of the Scottish game.
“In all honesty, we just thought of it selfishly for Hearts at first,” he said.
“We needed to develop players, we needed to develop our talents and get them tougher tests.
“We had a good academy, a thriving academy, we needed to develop players, and they would be going up against these Lowland League players.
“Detractors will say that they don't think it's a good look, that we weren't in it to win the league, we were just in it to develop players. But we were in it to show that we've got a talented team here.
"We want to compete, but we also want to show that we fight, we can be aggressive, we can be physical, but we can also play, we can dominate ball, we can dominate teams, and show that going from being an academy team to a B team, that our boys can actually thrive in that environment.
“I'd like to think that Celtic and Rangers, they had the same idea. It was of course mainly about the development of our players, but we also thought that it'll develop the league because we're a good team, we're bringing a good team in.
“We're bringing probably a different style to a lot of the other teams in the league, in the sense that, yes the boys are full time, yes they train every day, but they want to keep the ball, they want to dominate the ball, so that gives other teams in the league a wee problem, other coaches in the league, I would imagine, a nice issue.
“How do we stop this? How do we analyse this? How do we press them? We thought it was just contributing towards developing everybody really – us, the opposition, the coaches, the referees, to see them come up against these types of players.
“For us, the wider issue was, we need to develop players for Scottish football. It doesn’t matter what club it is. The jump from Motherwell's under 18s to the first team is too high, the jump from St Mirren's under 18s to the first team is too high, and so on. So, how do we bridge the gap?
“The B team, for us, massively bridged the gap. Massively.”
That idea of late developers potentially being lost to Hearts, and indeed, the wider game, is one that Savage expands on.
“It was Frankie McAvoy who said to me about 15 years ago when he was at Hamilton Accies, ‘Joe, I'm not just here to build players for Hamilton Accies, I'm here to make football players in general,” he said.
“’I want these boys to have careers.’
“Part of our thinking was, if we didn't have a B team then we might have had to release seven or eight players, and three or four of them might just have decided that they were disillusioned with it, they don't like it anymore, they don't want to feel that rejection again. They’re just going to go into their shell and never look at football again and not kick a ball again.
“That was in our thoughts, we want to keep players playing football, we want to keep players in a full-time environment, we want to continue to develop them. But we also believe that we are coaching them for another year or two to be ready for the first team.
“We would never have seen those five players on that list all jumping right into the first team. Never.”
He is surprised then that more Premiership clubs haven’t yet created their own B teams, but thinks that is the way the wind is slowly blowing.
“I think the clubs that know that they need to develop players and produce players from their academy, they have to be seriously thinking about it,” he said.
“If you're serious about player development then for me, a B team is crucial for that.
“At Hearts we became very, very serious about it. We knew that we couldn't rely on signing players constantly from all over the world.”
Savage is keen to stress though that he isn’t holding B teams up as a panacea to Scottish football’s ills when it comes to producing players. He is keenly aware that the pathway for any two players is rarely the same, and he instead sees the Hearts B team as an aid to their development, rather than a guaranteed production line.
The amount of time a Finlay Pollock or a Makenzie Kirk spend in the B team may not be right for a James Wilson, for example. So, there has to also be a cultural shift, in his opinion, in the way that clubs and their agents view young players when they do reach first team level, and he holds up exciting Hearts striker Wilson as the perfect example of how a prospect should be nurtured.
“He's the special one, isn't he?” he said.
“PLG, they are his agency, and they have helped massively with his development. They're really big on helping player development in Scotland. Their attitude is, play 100 games in Scotland, then look at getting your big move.
“They've actually said to players, ‘we don't want to move you just now, play 100 games, then get your move’.
“Myself, Robbie Neilson and Frankie McAvoy, we met James' parents for an Italian to go over what we planned to do and we just faced this massive competition. Celtic were trying to get him, Rangers were trying to get him, Aston Villa, Leeds, Man United, they were all trying to get him.
“But James has a very, very mature head on his shoulders. He's seen the pathway, which was great for us. At 17, he was ready to go into that first team environment and compete at that level.
“But I could honestly say to you right now that if it wasn’t for the B team, then a few of the others wouldn't have managed to push through into that first team. It just wouldn't have happened, because for most kids the jump from the 18s to the first team is too big a jump.
“It's the best thing the club's done. For Hearts, it's been an absolute blessing.”
