JIM SPENCE: Do fans care that young Scots are being starved of Premiership opportunities?

Does it matter to you if your team contains any Scottish players or do you only care about results?

In Italy’s Serie A last Monday three Scots featured – Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour started for Napoli, with Liam Henderson playing for Empoli.

Two days before that game the same number of Scots took the field for St Mirren v Ross County, with the Buddies fielding just two and County only one.

Increasingly, between loan players and other signings from outside of Scotland, Scots players are becoming a rarity in the Premiership, and that signals danger for the national team and the development of the game here.

Dundee United have had great success tapping into the loan market this season with Sam Dalby, Manny Adegboyega and Luca Stephenson all crossing the border to giving sterling service.

But in the bigger picture there’s a worrying trend of fewer Scots emerging in our top flight.

My old BBC Sportsound colleague, commentator David Begg, pointed out that a few weekends ago only 35 of 132 players in the six games in the Premiership starting line-ups were Scottish.

Of our Tayside contingent, Dundee and United fielded four each, while St Johnstone started with two.

There have been foreign players in our top league for many years.

Dundee United under Jerry Kerr had five much loved Scandinavians in the 1960s; Dundee thrilled fans with Argentinians Claudio Caniggia and Fabian Caballero, and the supremely talented Georgian Georgi Nemsadze.

And St Johnstone supporters purr recalling the supremely talented Ukrainian Sergei Baltacha and the tireless energy and commitment of Canadian Nick Dasovic.

But those sides contained a strong nucleus of Scottish players to complement the foreign legion.

A better balance

I covered Caniggia’s debut when he scored in a 2-0 win at Aberdeen, but even then, there were still five Scots in that day’s starting 11.

Contrast that with today where Scots are a rarity at some clubs when the ref blows for kick off.

What the effect on our future standing at international level will be if we continue down this path is debatable, but it can’t make it any easier to produce Scotland teams which will prosper at European championships or World Cups.

The issue is closely tied to league reconstruction, which raised its head recently.

The current 12-club set up leaves managers fearful of relegation and the associated financial costs, and that leads to fewer Scots kids being given the chance to play.

Of those 35 Scots who started according to David Begg’s statistics, only two were teenagers.

That’s surely a serious warning that we are failing to develop and blood players at a young enough age to allow them to develop and mature at the highest level of our game.

A bigger top league might allow more young Scots to be introduced in starting line-ups.

Many fans of course put club before country and it may be that supporters don’t care where players come from as long as their team is doing well.

But the overall development of our national game seems likely to be a negative one if the current signing trend continues.