How often should you play youngsters?

Should you give your youngsters many games to give them first team experience? Or is it wise to let them play in the reserves, I read somewhere on this forum that overplaying can hinder players development? How does this effect the PA of players aswell.

Reason I ask is I play Chris Gunter reguarly at 17 for my team but his stats do not shoot up as much as I'd like. Also at Championship level, is it more appropriate to play your youngsters? Meaning does the PA increase more?

who ever told u over playing them was bad is a idiot, no there PA never changes the more u play them the quciker they reach there PA, the only reason why it hasnt gone up so much is becasue you are in the championship as soon as u go to the premiership they will shoot up

The more time they get on the pitch, the better they'll become. Common sense really.

I think that you do need to be careful not to overplay them though as their physical stats usually are not good enough to ensure they survive in lots of tough games. however more games = faster improvement, especially when they become 17+.

yeah, i can't see it doing any harm

but someone told me that if you play youngsters too much they peak to early and its bad in the long run

dont think that'll happen though...

Overplaying youngsters makes them jaded, and highly jaded youngsters lose their ability to gain PA. This is why it's important not to have under-18s starting every match. Mattock often fails to reach his potential if he's left at Leicester, for example, since he starts every match for them.

Around the age of 18+ it's safer to play them more, but until they're 21 it's still something to be careful of.

And the higher level of league the more PA they gain.

Originally posted by the expert:

who ever told u over playing them was bad is a idiot, no there PA never changes the more u play them the quciker they reach there PA, the only reason why it hasnt gone up so much is becasue you are in the championship as soon as u go to the premiership they will shoot up

No your the idiot.

You can play youngsters too much, the game does reconise this. It can harm the development of a players long term game.

The best thing to do is start off gradually and give them sub apperrances, starts in unimportant games and build on this and you'll find they improve better.

the only way they will not reach there PA if they play in a rubbish team or if they are playing rubbish for a good team, if he is playing well leave him in if hes playing rubbish only use him as a sub so he can keep good morale and play against players when they are tired more chance of him playing well and reachin PA quciker

only if they are playing badly it will effect them on the original patch i had dan gosling playing when he was 17 at watford got promoted to the premiership and he was 18 playing in the prem and the season after chelsea made a bid for him if they are playin bad get him out off there lol

lol if you overplay him and he is consistently getting 5s and 6s its just bad.

Cheers for all the contributions, I'm going to rest Gunter for the rest of the season and only give him sub appearances

Originally posted by Arathonas:

Overplaying youngsters makes them jaded, and highly jaded youngsters lose their ability to gain PA. This is why it's important not to have under-18s starting every match. Mattock often fails to reach his potential if he's left at Leicester, for example, since he starts every match for them.

Around the age of 18+ it's safer to play them more, but until they're 21 it's still something to be careful of.

And the higher level of league the more PA they gain.

This is exactly what I have found aswell. I have signed Lauri Dalla Valle on two seperate occassions. First time I played him too often and found that he didn't develop into the player he could have been. The second time I signed him I dumped him into my reserves and then gradually started giving him sub appearances based on reserve performances. Then once I thought he needed more first team experience I loaned him out to a lower division (this is with me as a Premiership club btw) and then so on and so on until he is ready to challenge someone for a regular first team place.

I played my youngsters alot then rested them and there stats went up alot, I do believe though that more first team football is better no? At what age can you consistently play a youngster?

I try to not give them more than 15-20 games a season when they're less than 20

I found 6 regens with PA over 190 and theyre all between 16-20 years of age...

I am using tug's training and i am playing them in the under 20's league not in my first team league... is this good? if not... any suggestions?

thanks