The Grassroot System

I thought it would be quite interesting to have a bit of discussion about Grassroot Systems which are, IMO, a model which can be most successfull. For keen followers of the Premiership, which I am sure most people are, there is a system which big clubs follow. Now they might be run in diffrent ways but the "system" is pretty much the same. The most successfull clubs to have used a grassroot system are indeed Arsenal and Man Utd. Although diffrent interpretations they use the same basics.

In FM it is very possible to run a grassroot system and can achieve both economical and club success. With that said it is worth taking a time out and just have a look at the future of YOUR club. Let's take a little look at different steps clubs take to achieve success.

Step 1 - The Life Cycle

I would like to go as far as to say Arsenal have firm policy of what the life cycle of each player is whilst other clubs have roughly the same. I think other clubs apart from Arsenal don't see a over 30+ player as dispensible just because of his age. If you look at United you would say they were indispensible because of their experience but Wenger doesn't mind offloading the odd 29+ year old player if he has a talented player in reserve.

The Arsenal Model is as followed -

a) A young player is bought in to the club. Any age below 19-20 years of age. It depends really if he is going to be a sound backup or a player for the future.

b) The player in question spends most time in the reserves but, as said, is a backup in case of injuries or suspension.

c) After a season or two he is ready to be a squad rotator or if better a first team regular.

d) At 23+ he's a key/important player for the team

e) 30+ he is dispensible and unless wants to sign 1 year deals is sold.

The way other teams work is a little more straight forward and doesn't have as strict guidelines -

a) Young player bought in (again U19-20)

b) Spends most time in U18's or Reserve squad and/or is loaned out.

c) Becomes rotator/important/key player of the team.

Whatever you do with the youngster during his learning period is baasically up to you as the manager because there are diffrent ways of doing things until that gem becomes a part of the first team. This is what I prefer to do -

1) Buy in the young player. Usually I set a limit of £5m to what I spend on a youth player but the younger they are the cheaper so I usuall buy 15-17 year olds and plonk them straight into the youth set up.

2) Once they reach 18 I take them up to the reserves. I don't loan them out straight away, I keep them on my training for a year and if the opportunity presents itself I give them a run out in the first team. After that year I then loan them out. By the time they come back they should be around 20 years old and you should be able to tell if he has something to offer.

3) If he has no bright future I sell him and invest the funds into other players. If he has then he's ready for the first team.

Step 2 - The Balance Pyramid

So does this work? Sure it does but there is another thing you have to think about. That's right, Balance. Balance with a capital B. You remember what happened to Arsenal when they took their policy too literally? They lost rhythm. Why? The balance was wrong as there was too many youngsters. There are three steps to create this balance in a team.

A) Experience: The old heads of the team. The players who have been there and done that. Examples would be Scholes, Neville, Giggs and Van der Saar from United. From Arsenal I'd say Gallas, Toure and Almunia.

B) The Core: The key players in the squad. van Persie, Sagna, Adebayor, Clichy or Ferdinand, Carrick, Rooney, Ronaldo.

C) Youngsters: The gems you're ready to spring onto the scene. Not going to list all as you probably know them already.

How the pyramid works is that as the years go by the youngsters turn into Core players and the Core players into Experienced players and then the experienced players either get sold or in United's case retire. As I said before Wenger keeps it stricter so he sells whilst other clubs keep them as their experience is valuble.

The most important thing about the balance is too make sure you don't have too little or too much of A's and C's. If you have too many A's then there might not bee enough drive in the team. If you have too many C's you haven't got enough experience on the pitch. There is a fine line but once you get it right, it's sweet!

Step 3 - Scouting

This could of easily been Step number one but I think it was important to get the cycles outof the way. How great does it not feel when you've got your scout out working hard to find those players for you and then he comes back with a gem of a player and turns into a world class player for you. It feels GREAT!

First port of call is hire as many scouts as your board allows. Nowadays I usually set determination as the highest attribute I look for in scouts as they get the job done quicker and are more determined to find players so if you are a little club I would go for a 15 Determination + 10JP/JA any day of the week. But if you're a bigger club you should be looking for a highly determined scout with high JP and then have JA as the third attribute on the list.

Always get a second opinion! If one of your scouts finds a good player/prospect always get another one of your scouts to evaluate him too. I always have a "head scout" who I trust mostly (He usually has 20 JP) and run things by him.

So I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it up. Any questions feel free to ask

FFT has a really good article about Boca Juniors youth system in the most recent addition. A very good read.

Enjoyed reading that. Another area you could consider is the balance of where the youth players originate from e.g. mainly scouted from foreign countries (Arsenal), mainly homegrown (Middlesbrough) or a balance of both (most other teams). So different teams will put a greater reliance on either their academies or their scouts.

The way I scout for the youth team is to filter all 16yo and under from your continent (you end up with about 3000-4000), get a report on all of them (try to limit scouts to as few players as possible to get the reports quicker), then the 6+ star players are scouted further by my head scout. tends to find the gems from the smaller countries much better

Enjoyed reading that. Another area you could consider is the balance of where the youth players originate from e.g. mainly scouted from foreign countries (Arsenal), mainly homegrown (Middlesbrough) or a balance of both (most other teams). So different teams will put a greater reliance on either their academies or their scouts.

tbh I think if all teams had good resources they would always have scouts abroad. However Middlesbrough don't have a massive bank balance to be spending loads of money so they have to bring through from the academy and scour youth teams in England. Arsenal do this too but it's only recently their English talent has broken into the "Youngsters category" (Hoyte, Gibbs, Whiltshire, Randall).

Also it depends on the manager. Wenger has massive links to French talent due to his connections within the FFF whilst I doubt someone like Southgate has got a lot of contacts outside England. Roy Hodgson is a good example. Due to his vast experience in Scandinavia he is able to pick up good Scandinavians at really good prices because the market isn't inflated. I'm surprised a lot of teams don't scour Scadinavia more because there is loads of talent it costs peanuts compared to other countries.

The way I scout for the youth team is to filter all 16yo and under from your continent (you end up with about 3000-4000), get a report on all of them (try to limit scouts to as few players as possible to get the reports quicker), then the 6+ star players are scouted further by my head scout. tends to find the gems from the smaller countries much better

You do realize the more you scour the bigger the knowledge and the bigger your search player database would be? But yes that is another way of doing it however I do trust scouts with high determination to find talent without me having to look at 1000's of scout reports

yeah, i realise that I can end up getting some pretty big numbers going on but if I am playing in say Australia then the numbers are pretty small again

yeah, i realise that I can end up getting some pretty big numbers going on but if I am playing in say Australia then the numbers are pretty small again

Of course. But if you're in Australia it is going to be difficult to get European talent anyways so you're better off trying to steal youth's from your opponents with Youth Academy's.

Yeah, I like to keep all bases covered when managing in europe. If you are managing in a smaller country my way gets all players ranked. I am not trying to say it is a better way (I actually do like your way as well) but it is just another way to scout for talent before using your system. How do you find your talent for your youth team?

Very good opening post

At the beginning of each new season i scout any players that have a value of 750k or higher in the youth teams and set two scouts as England U18 constant scouters. This way i can see and get the prospects that are easy to see form the beginning and also get the ones that are harder to see but cheaper to buy due to the scouts scouting the U18s during the season. I also do this for other major leagues but a lot of teams dont have U18s squads which is quite annoying. Also have a lot of scouts on status - world.

Good opening post , enjoyed much reading it

Yeah, I like to keep all bases covered when managing in europe. If you are managing in a smaller country my way gets all players ranked. I am not trying to say it is a better way (I actually do like your way as well) but it is just another way to scout for talent before using your system. How do you find your talent for your youth team?

Thruogh scouting really. If I can afford to hand pick my own staff I'd pick staff from diffrent nations so I get as wide spread as possible. At Liverpool I had -

Paul Johnson - English

Eduardo Marcia -Spanish

Roberto Bettega - Italian

Laurent Viaud - French

Wolfgang Dremmler - German

Eduardo Peixe - Portuguese

Jan Waisapy - Dutch (NewGen)

Jan Heinze - Danish

Elber Ferreira - Brazilian

This way they can first scout their own nations and then surrounding nations to achieve enough landmass as possibel. If I'm only looking for talent I instruct them to look at players who are max 18 years old. Seeing as I was quite a big club then I had them only looking at youngsters as the first team was already world class.