Craig Mackail-Smith Article

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I would like to think that our scouting/management team would be capable of making that kind of judgement. It should be possible to assess from the way that someone plays - as opposed to the raw numbers - whether they are likely to be able to perform at a certain level.

I agree, and they've already made the decision that he's not worth the fee being asked when we decided to sign McLean instead in January.

I just have an aversion to going after any lower league player that's been getting hyped by the press for a long time without anybody having already taken the gamble. There's 22 clubs asked about him, and only 2 or 3 have thought he was worth a bid, and nobody has thought he was worth the asking price.

That's 19 or 20 clubs have looked and dismissed him, another 1 or 2 (including us) that have decided to go elsewhere. I don't see why fans of various clubs are still going round saying they should take a punt on them and they'd love to see it happen when that many professionals have decided he's not up to it, or at least the chances of him being up to it don't justify the price.

Yes but we're talking about players from lower league that have done well at championship level. So hooper almost single handedly kept Scunny up and got the promoted from L1 and is continuing at Celtic, whether you gauge the SPL as lower prem or upper championship, he is still progressing and still scoring goals at a higher level!

As someone who's seen more of the SPL than most of us in recent years (the odd game, plus most of Dunfermline's home games when they were still SPL) I don't even rate the SPL that highly. The Old Firm are at the same level as the yoyo teams like WBA. The rest of the SPL is like L1 at best, although granted the Championship this season has been a lot nearer to L1 than it was a few years ago.