Jonathan Roche knows the dream of unearthing an Irish Zlatan Ibrahimovic from within his club's structures is remote.

And yet that is precisely what the Shamrock Rovers chairman is trying to achieve, after a winter spent restructuring the club's underage section and taking the controversial – but innovative – step of entering a 'B' team into next season's League of Ireland First Division. The team will be managed by Colin Hawkins.

Criticised by Liam Buckley for being allowed avail of what the St Patrick's manager believes to be an unfair advantage, Rovers are, nonetheless, investing in this loss leader, a €60,000 drain on their €1.5m per-annum budget.

"We have to do something," said Roche, "because we can't stand still and think, 'right, we spend the most in Irish football therefore we will win trophies'. Having money isn't enough. We have barely brought any players through our system in recent years. That has to change and this 'B' team is part of the plan."

There are other aspects to the rebuilding project, including the appointment of Shane Robinson, the first-team midfielder, as a coaching co-ordinator in the club's underage system.

HELPFUL

"We spoke to numerous clubs from around Europe to get an idea of the templates they use," said Roche. "Tottenham were incredibly helpful, but do things on a scale beyond our reach. We went to Serbia, Croatia and Malta for ideas, but the club we are trying to imitate closest is Malmo, who won the Swedish title recently with a team whose average age was 22, who have focused on youth development for a couple of decades now, who brought through Zlatan and who have spent a huge amount of time, but not necessarily a huge amount of money, on their youth systems.

"This concept has to work for us because the reality is there is a problem in Irish football, in that schoolboy clubs are brilliant at developing players up to the age of 16, but from 16 on, many talented players can be lost to the game.

"We need to bridge that gap – and the 'B' team allows us to do that."

And yet despite developing a long-term strategy which goes against the traditional failings of League of Ireland clubs obsessed by the short-term fix, Roche and Rovers have come in for criticism. Yesterday he hit back.

"I don't want to get into a spat with Liam Buckley. His recent comments surprised me because we spoke to St Pat's about this. We didn't speak to Liam personally, but we spoke to his club and they had no interest in it.

"People have suggested we have an unfair advantage. We don't. Yes, we have an advantage, but it is a fair one.

"Anyone could have applied to the FAI to enter a 'B' team into the League of Ireland. But other clubs weren't interested. We were."

Irish Independent