I'm a huge fan of signing up and coming players from Scotland and Ireland for that matter. The list is endless of players who have succeeded over the years. In the 80's and 90's you were more likely to pay a decent fee to get the better players down, whereas now because of the money in the English game, you'll see top Scottish players coming to League One clubs, aside of Celtic and historically Rangers, who of course have more pulling power for players to stay.
The thing is fans and clubs need to be patient when players come south to adjust to living so far away from home and a different, often higher standard of football. You get decent value but as with many small buy signings, they need time to step up from the level they were playing and often clubs don't want to develop, they want players to hit the ground running.
We've signed some decent Scottish players, both recently and in the past, but to be fair to the Scottish leagues, McNulty and Scougall both came from the Scottish Championship which will be similar to League 2 - at best! Jamie Murphy on the other hand came from the SPL and although he took half a season to adjust, he proved to be a multi million player. They often play more football for the same age in Scotland because they have less money to go out and buy players. League 2 and the conference is similar in that there many decent players but you'll often pay more than you would for someone from the SPL. I hope we do buy from Scotland again because it will prove successful and generally, they seem to have a decent attitude too. Coutts and Fleck both came through the Scottish set up and there as good as anyone in League One I think we can all agree!
