Scottish Premiership Squad Analysis - 2025/26
A breakdown of every club’s summer business, squad usage, and game time for Scottish and young players.
Last season, the focus on opportunities for youth players in the Scottish top flight intensified, particularly after the SFA published a transition report in August 2024 which aimed to address player development and progression. The report stated that there are “well documented issues” facing Scottish football at the transition phase (players aged from 16-21 years of age). According to the report, these “challenges” of transitioning players from academy football to the senior game:
limit the future performance of our professional clubs
limit the future performance of our national team
limits the economic growth of our game.
After comparing Scotland to lots of similarly sized nations that do a better job of developing their youth, the report made a range of recommendations - and a working group was established to consider these recommendations. Fourteen months on, and we still eagerly await an update from the working group to explain what has been implemented since the report was published, and what the future plans to improve the situation further are.
That’s not to say nothing has happened, and of course in June this year the SFA announced the “cooperation agreement”. This allows players in this ‘transition phase’ (aged 16-21), who are eligible to represent Scotland, to join a lower league club - but unlike a traditional loan, they are still permitted to move back and forth to the parent club throughout the season. It’s clearly not enough though, and more needs done - given the continually declining number of young Scottish players coming through in the Premiership...
LAST SEASON
Focusing only on the share of Premiership minutes played by those aged 21 or under last season reveals a league average of under 13%. The club that gave the most minutes to youngsters in the division last season was Dundee, with nearly a quarter of their playing minutes given to those aged 21 or under. The Dee narrowly avoided the relegation playoff with a 2-0 win away to St. Johnstone, only for manager Tony Docherty to then lose his job the next day. There’s yer reward for playing those youngsters, Tony!
At the other end of the tables - both the league table and the “minutes given to youngsters table” - we find St. Mirren. Stephen Robinson had another fantastic season in Paisley securing a third consecutive top six finish (only Celtic and Rangers have done the same over the last three seasons). However, that achievement was against the backdrop of giving less than 1% of playing time to players aged 21 or under, the lowest percentage in the league, by far.
This article will now look at the makeup of the squads of the twelve Premiership in the current season, covering a number of different aspects:
Number of summer signings
Average time spent at a club
Number of players used so far
Average age of the players fielded
% of minutes given to club-trained players
% of minutes given to foreign players
Average height of players used
SUMMER TRANSFER BUSINESS
As usual in Scottish football, it was a summer of significant player turnover at the majority of clubs. With a net spend of £21 million, Rangers were by far the biggest spenders, but there was also notable investment elsewhere, with Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen and Dundee United all looking to strengthen and develop their squads in the hunt for European football.
FIFA dictates that a club can have a maximum of six players on loan at one time. It was due to this rule that Dundee United opted to trigger the option to make the loan of Dario Naamo permanent in the summer window, to then free up a loan space to then re-sign Luca Stephenson on loan from Liverpool. However, players aged 21 and younger are exempt from these limitations, and so there can be instances of a club having more than six players in on loan at any one time - as is the case with Falkirk this season (7 of their 9 signings were loans).
AVERAGE TIME SPENT AT CLUB
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