By Dave Bowler

A little news story might have passed you by this week, but it could be a significant one, particularly in the realms of Scottish football, already deep enough in the financial doldrums.

Jack Grimmer, a 17 year old product of the youth system at Aberdeen, moved down south to Fulham, signing a three year deal. Grimmer has come through the ranks at Aberdeen, but even though he became their youngest ever debutant in April 2010 when he played against Rangers at the age of 16 years, two months and 13 days. Since then – almost two years on – Grimmer has managed just two more first team games, and has not featured this season. And that’s no surprise is it? To be playing regular football at that age, you have to be a Wayne Rooney or a Michael Owen.

Simply, the boy is not ready to play, something Aberdeen acknowledged, their manager Craig Brown having repeatedly made it clear to Grimmer that he was being brought on in the U19 league before stepping up to be a first team squad member next term, following in the recent footsteps of the likes of Andrew Considine and Ryan Jack, regulars now, players who benefited from the nurturing process at Pittodrie.

To call for patience in the 21^st century is as big an anachronism as having a wind up wristwatch. Seeing the bigger picture is equally defunct. Grimmer – and his advisors – will be financially better placed over the next couple of years, that much is inevitable. But over the next decade? Can we be so sure of that?

Surely any young player like Grimmer must stand a better chance of playing first team football at Aberdeen than he does at Fulham, who have immediately put him in their development squad? Fulham may not be the biggest spenders in the Premier League, but they’ve got a few quid and are more than willing to spend them if necessary. Grimmer can look forward to a couple of seasons out on loan if he’s lucky before the club starts to make decisions on his future as his current contract comes to its close.

You might argue Fulham deserve credit for being forward looking and perhaps they do. But really, their actions are the result of financial rather than football planning. The cost of buying up a 17 year old is chickenfeed, estimated at around £100,000 which is little more than an accounting error in the world of the Premier League. It’s the act of seasoned gamblers. Put down £100k, an amount we can afford to lose if it all goes wrong. If it goes right, he’ll be worth £2million, £10million, who knows? For Fulham, it’s a simple risk and reward equation.

For Aberdeen, or for Dunfermline, St. Mirren, Kilmarnock and the rest, they will surely begin to look at a different risk and reward equation. Theirs will be along the lines of “Six years invested in the likes of a Jack Grimmer, lots of time, effort, work, resources and he’s gone for peanuts before he’s really kicked a ball in anger for us. Worth it?”

Scottish football is dangerously close to being caught in a Catch 22 situation. The economics of the game and of the nation are sufficiently precarious that it is apparent that for the bulk of the clubs, outwith the Old Firm maybe, raiding the transfer market for high priced talent is a thing of the past. High wages have pretty much gone too. There is only one way of remedying that, and that is to grow your own footballers.

But here’s the catch. Why spend all that money on bringing young talent through if the English clubs can simply pop over the border and then steal them away for next to nothing, before the clubs have had anything like a return on their investment? What’s the point in trying to improve your club and the Scottish game when everything that you do can be undermined by raiders from down south? Don’t you think that one or two of those SPL clubs will, when budget time comes around again, take a look at that six figure number that says “Youth Development” and think that they’ll be damned if they’re spending that money just for the benefit of Fulham? And what does that then do to the Scottish national team in years to come?

The irony is that Scottish clubs are being punished for the excellent work they’ve been doing in recent times in youth development. The national sides at the various age groups have been regularly impressive in recent years, which has simply alerted the predators who are now taking a look at life in Scotland and finding the menu very much to their liking. But there is no industry in the world that operates on the principle of pure self interest than football. And once that self interest in any particular project disappears, the project itself is soon to follow.

It isn’t just Scottish clubs that are going to suffer of course. At Luton, the three Dasilva brothers, twins of 12 and an elder sibling of 13, have concluded at their advanced age that after Luton lost in the Conference play-offs last term, they “wished to look at other options”. Pausing only to ruminate that kids of that age with opinions of such deluded grandeur might be better off spending a couple of nights locked in their bedrooms without recourse to their Wii so they might have time to dismount the high horse they’ve got onto, we come to what those options were. The answer is Chelsea, a club with a 100% record in youth football – they’ve totally failed in bringing a player through to their first team since John Terry.

The deal, we’re told, could be worth up to £1million to Luton. Yes, if all three play for the first team. Chances? Negligible. And if they do? £1million on three first teamers for a team that was mugged to the tune of £50million by Liverpool this time last year looks a very reasonable punt. Plus if they’re lucky, the self serving actions of clubs like themselves will have driven Luton to the same wall that Darlington currently has its back against.

Philanthropy, it’s a wonderful thing.