McClair: No changes yet

Brian McClair revealed he had only made minor changes to Scotland's youth strategy in his first 10 weeks as Scottish Football Association performance director.

McClair replaced Mark Wotte on June 1 after leaving Manchester United and made his first announcement this week when he named a new Scotland Under-21 head coach.

However, even then the move was only a reshuffle as he promoted Ricky Sbragia to Scotland Under-21 head coach with Scot Gemmill moving up the Under-19s.

McClair, who was at Hampden to welcome the new intake of SFA Performance School pupils on Thursday, said: "I think it's too early to say there are going to be major changes. We are going through a review process and there are little tweaks.

"I'm not going to rush into doing anything because when you rush into things, you tend to do the wrong thing.

"I've been at all the performance schools and a lot of the clubs and I have been encouraged by what I have seen.

"I have met a lot of people who are passionate about youth development and give up a lot of their own time to be involved.

"I'm particularly pleased about the enthusiasm and the positivity everywhere that I've been.''

McClair is tasked with continuing an elite development programme that was designed to produce major improvements by 2020.

But SFA chief executive Stewart Regan believes there are already encouraging signs for the £15million scheme.

"We are four years into a programme to develop elite players for the future,'' Regan said.

"We are collecting data on how the kids are performing, the accuracy of their passing, their shooting, their fitness.

"Ultimately the true measure will be how many of them make it, how many get signed by clubs on professional contracts, how many pull on a first-team shirt, how many play for Scotland. We are a few years away from that but we are making good progress.

"Anything new is always challenging, whenever you make new investments you always want to know if it's value for money.

"What we are absolutely confident about is that giving children more contact time with the ball is absolutely the right thing to do; giving them the chance to work with good coaches who have experience in developing children is absolutely the right thing to do; giving them the chance to play against the best kids from other schools is equally important; and to try to teach them a different philosophy for Scotland: one that is less physical and more interested in passing and building from the back.''