ALAN BURROWS didn’t need to look far to find some ammunition for his argument while making an ascent up the steps to Hampden’s main entrance.

On his way to a Scottish Football Association meeting called to outline the proposed Project Brave back in October, a plan that is suggested to have Motherwell missing out on the Elite youth programme, the Motherwell chief executive was stopped dead in his tracks as his gaze was diverted to a large picture above his head.

“The day we went into Hampden to have this meeting, there was a big billboard outside stadium that caught my eye,” he explains to me, a look of incredulity still embossed on his face.

“It was of Faddy’s goal in France [James McFadden’s winner in the 1-0 victory over France in a Euro 2008 qualifier]. It was the aftermath of his wonder strike and the three players in the picture were Faddy, Lee McCulloch and Stephen Pearson.

“I thought to myself ‘I’m going to a meeting to get told that we are potentially getting locked out of this academy programme and there’s a big picture at Hampden on the SFA wall of three boys whose one thing in common is that they all came through the youth set up at Motherwell’.

“The guy who scored the goal in one of Scotland’s greatest victories in the last 20 years came from Motherwell. The two that celebrated with him first came from Motherwell. A quarter of the team that beat France in Paris came from Motherwell, yet we’re then getting told we’re not getting told we’re not good enough to be at the elite level of Scottish football.”

The fact you probably didn’t need an explanation on top of ‘Faddy’s goal in France’ to know what strike Burrows was referring to also proves a point.

Details emerged back in November of the Project Brave blueprint that includes the creation a two-tiered youth set-up, with an eight-team elite league to help cultivate future Scotland internationalists. It is believed cl6ubs such as Motherwell, Dundee United, Partick Thistle and Dundee would be excluded.

Understandably, it is a proposal that doesn’t sit well with those on the wrong end of the divide, particularly Motherwell given their past, present and their future.

“Off the top of my head, in the last 15 years we’ve had James McFadden, Stephen Pearson, Stevie Hammell, David Clarkson, Lee McCulloch. Mark Reynold and Jamie Murphy were also in the squads. Even Steven Saunders,” said Burrows. “There are umpteen examples of us producing young players for the international level, which is the SFA’s raison d’etre.

“All the clubs want to produce good young players, that’s obvious. However, some need to produce good young players, and that’s where the difference is and this is where I get emotional and personal with this.

“Given a model that doesn’t revolve around a benefactor, the onus is on the club to recruit good players to sell them and more so to cultivate your own players for the first team and then to trade them on for full value when the time is right. That is the only viable technique this club has going forward.

“Would it put Motherwell off a cliff to be excluded? If we are not allowed to develop players in the way we would, if we are not allowed to try and compete for the best players in the area, if we can’t get the best players through our youth system into the first team with a view to sell them then it presents a real clear danger to this football club, yes.

“Jim McMahon, the chairman, said at the last AGM that it’s the biggest existential threat to the club at the moment. That’s how serious it would be.”

Given the conveyor belt of talent that has trundled through the Fir Park factory over the last two decades it’s clear to understand the frustration. That feeling is only added to when it’s pointed out one of only two players to have graduated all the way through one of the SFA’s performance schools is at Motherwell - Jake Hastie - while the player to score both goals in Scotland’s Victory Shield draw with Wales back in November was Jamie Semple, the Motherwell U17 and U20 forward.

However, Burrows’ argues vociferously that while his loyalties are clearly seen through the prism of claret and amber tinted spectacles, his concerns are founded in objectivity and a desire to bring attention to the glaring problem in plans to fix the youth set-up of our game.

He said: “Even if we were one of the eight, though, I’d still have grave reservations over this. It wouldn’t be fair to the likes of Thistle or Killie if they could prove they could make it. I promise you that wouldn’t be the case. It’s not right, and when it’s not right the onus is on people to say there are ideas that are good but there are things that are fundamentally wrong in it. That includes setting an arbitrary number of clubs.

“Stewart Regan [the SFA chief executive] said there was an openness and willingness to expand it. That told me a key point. If there was some sort of independent advice or expert opinion that suggested that was the optimum number, then at least you could say it was based on something.

“But what Stewart said suggested the number is completely plucked from the air.”

Naturally the focus on youth football has seen the spotlight switched to just that, players in their early teens and younger and how they can be nurtured from children into the next Scottish national team superstar.

Yet, in a project with the word brave stuck on the end, it is a perceived reluctance do so at club level that Burrows believes is deserving of attention.

“We are delving deep into youth football, but there are a couple of fundamentals we are missing. Not enough young players are getting enough first-team football at any early age. Look at Chris Cadden here. Chris was on the verge of the 2015 summer of going out on loan to Albion Rovers or Dunfermline. You could probably say he wasn’t massively in the plans.

“Mark McGhee came in just over a month later and very quickly Chris found himself in the first team and signing a new contract. He then signed another one, got into the Scotland U21s and is now considered one of the best young players in the country.

“That’s down to his own drive to be better, but what you can’t ignore is that Chris Cadden is a better player because Chris Cadden is playing every week while learning the game.

“Are young players not playing because they are not good enough, or is it that the structure in Scotland isn’t conducive to young players thrown in at the deep end? The league is so tight in the Premiership so because of the cut-throat nature I don’t think it lends itself to allow managers to take a risk by putting young players in.

“It takes a brave manager or a certain circumstances. You have to look at the size of the league, you have to look at the differences between the top league and the second league [financially] so much so half the clubs are terrified of going down. You don’t gamble as much as you just want to make sure you stay in this division.

“If you can somehow lessen the fall between the two top flights to make the major disadvantage sporting rather than financial, you create an environment where managers will be more likely to put 17-21-year-olds into the first-team right away if they think they are good enough.

“If we are looking at youth football in Scotland, it can’t be done in isolation. You have to look at the bigger picture.”