ROY MacGREGOR wants to see meaningful progress in the quality of Scottish football, but the Ross County chairman recognises that the SFA’s new performance director, Malky Mackay, will have a tough job on his hands to persuade Scotland’s clubs to embrace change.

If they don’t want to, they won’t; if they do, it will take a decade before improvements are seen, MacGregor warns.

The man who has built the Global Energy Group into a world leader in the oil and gas services industry cares deeply about the future of the game in Scotland, hence his involvement in the SFA’s Project Brave working group, set-up to help halt its decline.

He backs Mackay, but is pragmatic enough to know that his colleagues in club boardrooms across the country must buy into accepting the way ahead is to rediscover our talent for discovering and nurturing homegrown talent.

And he does not subscribe to the view that part of any change must include another league restructure; a 16-team Premiership is not the way ahead.

“The SFA might be the governing body,” he said, “but it’s only the clubs who can develop players and more emphasis has got to go there and that’s in Project Brave where the clubs are responsible for development and are rewarded for it.

“There’s a lot to be enacted and it may be the start of turning Scottish football around. It’s going to take 10 years. It’s cultural.

“Ability and everything else might come into it but it is cultural. We need to learn that and admit that culturally it’s broken; that we’re in a chasm and we’re not coming out of that chasm quickly enough.

“Other nations are overtaking us. We’re 67th in the world rankings.

It’s just awful and we have to admit it to ourselves that it’s not right and try and do something about it and I do see that Scottish football has come through the financial mire that used to be there.

“Now, there’s sense back in it and there is a chance with the right vision and the right development, coming from and driven by the clubs, that this can work.”

MacGregor hopes Mackay will be ready to challenge the game’s big guns should they resist change. Whatever is happening today in Scottish football, it isn’t working.

“I sit on Project Brave and I agree with 95 per cent of what was done there,” he said. “But getting it enacted and getting Malky Mackay to see that it’s right and to challenge the football establishment is what’s needed because whatever we’re doing, we’re not doing it right.

“I’m not quite sure changing the league system will make things better without sorting football at grass-roots level.

“Getting youngsters, particularly in the 16-21 years age group – because that’s the age group where we lose so many – to play more competitive games against the better teams and to challenge themselves in that environment and in reserve football is the direction we need to go in.

“That’s the change we need rather than tinker with the league structure.

“How many teams from the Championship could play in the Premiership?

“You might get four and you might get a 16-team league but I don’t think that’ll solve any problems.

“I think the competition in the Premiership and in the Championship is good for each league.

“We did change things last year with the play-offs and it produced huge excitement and I welcome them even though we at Ross County might be one of the teams down there.

“It’s for every club to play to their football ability in whatever division they find themselves in.

“But I’m an optimist and I believe there is a realisation both at the SFA and at the clubs that something needs to be done.”

The financial imbalance in Scottish football, he insisted, mean the better resourced outfits will claim the principal positions in the

Ladbrokes Premiership while the remaining eight – like his own club – will be forced to scrap around at the lower end of the league table.

He said: “We’ve got Rangers back and the other city clubs – Celtic, Aberdeen and Hearts – are up there in the top four and then you’ve got eight community clubs in the mix. And we’re all in the mix; anyone, even at fifth, is wrong if they don’t believe that.

“I think the four city clubs will finish in the top four because of their greater resources and the community clubs will be scrapping it out trying not to finish in the bottom two.

“I suppose the challenge there is for any one or two of the eight to see if they can actually push the top four but it’s becoming more and more difficult to do that.

“St Johnstone have done it previous seasons and they are probably the nearest to doing it again.

“For Ross County, we need to find something different for the second half of the season and to find a way of getting out of the mix.”