Today’s story linking rising star Robby McCrorie with a move to London and West Ham only reminds us just what talent we have on our own doorstep, and just wonders why we don’t ever seem to trust it.

We have the incredibly promising McCrorie brothers, both of whom have plenty of experience at good levels of football, yet on our bench and in our first team it’s Wes Foderingham and Glen Kamara?

Can someone explain why our best players go out on loan to other clubs and we’re left with Andy Firth?

Players like the McCrories, the Docherties, and a glut of other talented players in their early 20s get frequently discarded for guys like Kamara and Tavernier, for players like Coulibaly and Ejaria – kids themselves.

We bring in these loan or permanent players, rather than using our own, and for what?

What are we achieving with this strange strategy?

And it’s not just Steven Gerrard who doesn’t trust our players, his predecessors didn’t either. McCoist didn’t bother with the youth, right or wrong, other than McKay and Macleod, and even the great Walter, for all the achievements he had, wasn’t keen on the youth either.

Is it because managers don’t want to be held responsible for potentially ‘ruining’ a young club player? That if that kid looks promising, and dips in form, the manager gets the blame?

So to avoid that risk, and save their own reputation, they bring in alternatives instead?

We don’t know.

All we know is we’d like much more trust invested in Auchenhowie.

It’s producing good players. About time we saw them.