BBC’s Tom English answers your questions about Aberdeen

BBC Scotland’s chief sports writer Tom English answers some of your questions about Aberdeen.

Here’s what he had to say:

Matthew asked: This week, a graph was published online showing the percentage of minutes given to Under-21 players so far this season. Celtic, Aberdeen and Rangers all had zero. As Aberdeen fans, should we be concerned about young players not playing, or should we accept that we may have to sacrifice minutes for the under-21s if we want to remain in the top flight?

Tom replied: It’s a big question and we looked at it very closely at Sportsound at the start of the season and the numbers are very poor indeed.

The number of local players, especially young people under the age of 21, is very low. And Celtic, Aberdeen and Rangers don’t have them. Ideally all of these clubs would like to bring in their own players.

Aberdeen have done this and they have done a good job trading players over the years. I think they will want more. Every club wants more young players, but we cannot see them.

Is this the failure of the academies? Are the actors not good enough? If they’re not good enough and Celtic and Rangers have so many more resources than Aberdeen on that front, why can’t they get paid for it? Are the actors not good enough?

And if that’s the case, why? What’s wrong with the academy? Are the players good enough but not getting chances? We saw this at Celtic. They have produced good players and they only come to the team for one or two games and then they disappear.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s easier for Celtic to do it because they win most games pretty easily. So they have the capacity to put some homegrown youngsters from their academy on the air for 15, 20 minutes. Every other club, including Aberdeen, is struggling to put themselves in this enviable position.