Partick Thistle manager Alan Archibald admits that the introduction of the SFA’s flagship Project Brave initiative has given the club a major dilemma over their youth development.

Funding supplied to the club by lottery winners Colin and Christine Weir allowed the Jags to start the Thistle Weir Academy four years ago and sustain it to this day.

Archibald knows that their source of funding will not be there forever, and so the club are working at making their youth set-up self-sufficient.

However, that would prove even more problematic should they feel they have to push to achieve ‘elite’ academy status for fear of missing out on the best young talent.

“We’re at something of a crossroads,” Archibald said. “We have to decide whether we are going to go for elite status or not or whether we can even do it financially, because it’s even more money than we’re spending just now.

“I was there at the start of the academy when financially you could only do so much, and boys wouldn’t even have the right tracksuits or facilities.

“Now we’re so much more professional, and while we could still move on to another level, the Weir money has allowed us to do that.

“But we have to make it self-sufficient, the Weir money won’t be there forever. That’s something we’ll have to work out because everything comes out of the one big budget.

“The youth academy money will have to come from that, and with Project Brave coming in that will make it even more difficult still.

“I see the academy as part of the club, a big part of it, and the last thing I want to have to do is bin the academy unless we really have to. It’s a huge part of the club having its own identity.

“The fans always give their home-grown talent a bit more leeway, and it’s always good to see their own talent coming through, and I’d love to see more of it.

“The major problem with Project Brave is going to be the dilemma of going for elite status and the costs involved with that, or not doing it and maybe missing out on some of the best young players.

“I had a meeting with Gerry Britton last week about it to see where it leaves us and he’s going to put a proposal forward, because it is a massive amount of money.”

While fully understanding the financial constraints the club are working under, Archibald believes that if at all possible, having their own dedicated training base would benefit the club hugely.

If that even means dispensing with the grass surface of Firhill to lay astroturf, then reluctantly, it is a sacrifice he would be willing to make.

“One of the bigger frustrations of the job is that we don’t have our own facility at the moment,” he said.

“We’ve moved on a bit and we use the university and Lesser Hampden when the weather changes, but not having our own facility is my biggest bugbear because it doesn’t give you your own identity.

“There would be nothing better than having our own training facility, our own hub where all the academy players can come to and we’re all together.

“We do a day-release on a Thursday now, and the academy players have their lunch next to the first-team players and I get to see the faces coming through.

“I’d love to have that day-in, day-out. We’ve not got that and that means we have that additional ongoing cost of hiring pitches as well.

“Even going to astro might be something we have to look at, because if we are going to find a pathway for the kids and that’s the way we are going to go, we have to find a way to do that financially.

“Astro would tick a lot of boxes. I’m not a big fan of it, but it might be something we have to do because the Weir money is not going to be there forever.”