Alex Smith has proposed kickstarting a revolution in Scotland’s grassroots football – by letting the Old Firm buy up minnow clubs and 
running them as B teams.

The former Aberdeen and St Mirren boss is convinced the key to the game’s recovery lies in letting more young players flourish at Senior level.

And he reckons Scotland’s top clubs should be given the nod to take over some smaller outfits – even if it means ripping up the SFA rule book.

Read more: Paul Dickov: Scotland can copy Wales and Northern Ireland's path to success - by sticking with Gordon Strachan

Smith said: “There are reasons but I don’t see them as being strong enough to deny the big clubs being able to buy over some of the provincial clubs. If Rangers, for instance, were ever to buy over Airdrie and play in the championship in that brand new stadium which is sitting there, and likewise Celtic with Clyde at Broadwood or Livingston, they can get their young players and play them in a competitive environment where they and their staff are in charge of it. 

“The Spanish clubs do that all the time, but whenever you mention it in Scotland you get told that you can’t do it, that the constitution doesn’t allow one club to own another club. But just think of the benefits of getting young players playing.”

Read more: Paul Dickov: Scotland can copy Wales and Northern Ireland's path to success - by sticking with Gordon Strachan

The radical suggestion from the highly-respected football veteran comes as our national sport is mired in the doldrums.

The National’s team’s profile is at its lowest ebb for years.
And only Celtic’s displays are preventing Scotland’s European co-efficient from going into freefall.

Smith plunged a 16-year-old Paul Lambert into action in the 1987 Scottish Cup Final.

And he handed a 17-year-old Eoin Jess a start for Aberdeen in a League Cup.

But he fears the next generation of stars will be lost to the game unless there is a massive overhaul of the Scottish set-up.

He said: “We need to make sure we don’t get caught in this nostalgic nonsense that we can’t produce players. It is unfair that we as older people should criticise our young people for what is happening. 

“The problem is that they go from the years of ambition - say nine years old to 18 or whatever - and then when they are getting ready just to get in the first team they go from the age of ambition to the age of frustration and unfulfilment. 

“They get disillusioned. And they drop a bit off it because they can’t get in the first team. 

“The biggest problem for Scottish football is the blockage at the top of the academies. 
“We have the development league there which is a good pathway but some managers won’t play them in their first teams because the pressures are so heavy to get results. 

“We have tried the loan system but it only works for a few. Sometimes they go out on loan and don’t do well, people forget about them then it becomes worse for them.

“Managers have got to find the willingness and the courage to play them, to say ‘I know that kid and he won’t let me down’.
“St Mirren were the last team to win the Scottish Cup with 11 Scottish boys in the team, back in 1987. 

“From then, Rangers started bringing players, some great foreign players came in, then a lot of average players flooded in. 

“Now we are getting it from England because there are less and less English players playing in their top league, the ones who are not playing in the top league are in the championship, the ones not in the Championship in League One. 

“The ones who got rejected down there, are now being signed by our clubs who are desperate to stay in the Premier League. 

“We have got teams who are playing eight or nine English players at the one time. Plus all the Frenchmen that come in. That is why our kids are struggling to get in. 

Read more: Paul Dickov: Scotland can copy Wales and Northern Ireland's path to success - by sticking with Gordon Strachan

“If you look at the Aberdeen v Celtic match the other day and count the amount of Scottish lads that were playing it was frightening.” 

While the performance director’s office lies vacant, the SFA are still attempting to implement a policy to drastically cut the amount of young players in academies. 

Smith takes issue with the suggestion that the notion that the system is ‘bloated’. In his own area of Falkirk where he is the club’s director of football.  

He added: “We have got 130 kids in our academy and we were referred to in some of the stuff in papers as ‘bloated academies’,” said Smith. 

“We have got six teams, 20 kids in each team and we play maybe two games a week. How is that bloated?”