MANAGERS in England are wary of signing players from Scottish football because the standard of games makes it hard to judge how good they are, Harry Redknapp said last night.

The Queens Park Rangers manager said the Scottish scene had "dropped off the radar" for many of his colleagues south of the border and suggested that even Celtic's highly-rated defender, Virgil van Dijk, would be more convincing if he broke into the Netherlands team and was tested at international level. Redknapp said one or two SPFL-based players had caught his eye - he mentioned Van Dijk and team-mate James Forrest, with whom he was linked when in charge of Tottenham - but stressed he found it difficult to assess players in this country because the standard of opponent was inferior to England's top flight.

"Scottish football has dropped off the radar an awful lot for English managers," said Redknapp, who was in Glasgow at an event to promote online betting company 666BET.com before tomorrow night's Scotland-England game. "A player like Steven Naismith has come down and done great at Everton, and there are lots of others who have come down and done very well. But it's a bigger gamble now. I have lots of mates in Scotland who tell me there are lots of good young players coming through.

"We have a couple of full-time scouts in Scotland. When I was at Tottenham we had people working here and we have guys working in Scotland for us now. One or two of the guys who are catching our eye aren't even Scottish. The centre-half at Celtic [Van Dijk] has English clubs looking at him just now and he's a player that someone will look to make a move on at some stage.

"Who knows, he could come down and be a massive hit in England. You just don't know. I'd like to see him get into the Dutch side and start playing for them, then you'd get to see him at a higher level again. It's like the Championship players: you ask whether they could do it in the Premier League when they've been in the Championship. There's a big gap, that's why the three sides at the bottom of the Premier League were the sides who came up last season.

"It's tough, it's a big step. It's always a gamble when a player moves from Scotland to go to the Premier League. My chief scout liked the lad Forrest when I was at Tottenham and he drove me mad to sign him. He's suffered from injuries.

"Since Rangers went out of the top league it's been difficult. Coming up here to look at Scottish players isn't so easy as the competition isn't so great. It's hard to judge players when you come up to watch them in the Scottish league as you can't compare it to the English Premier League due to the quality of opposition. But I'm sure there are still a lot of good players out there as there are lots of good players in the Scottish team now."

Redknapp, 67, who was in Scotland with his QPR first team coach, Joe Jordan, continued the theme when discussing the current England team. They were certain to win their Euro 2016 qualifying group, he said, but a section with Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia, Switzerland and San Marino made it difficult to assess how much they had improved under Roy Hodgson since the terrible showing at the World Cup in the summer. Redknapp predicted a draw

at Parkhead tomorrow but said he would rather watch the Auld Enemy clash than a game like England's drab 3-1 qualifying win over Slovenia at Wembley on Saturday night.

"If the players know anything about the traditions of football and the past, they will come out and it will be a full-blooded affair. England-Scotland

was the highlight of the year.

"I don't think you can recapture that. You look

back to when Scotland came

to Wembley in '67 and beat England after we'd won the World Cup. If you look at the quality of the fantastic players Scotland produced at that time it's hard to compare this game. But this is still much more exciting than the qualifiers."