Selling World Class players for Class Youth

As the topic heading state, would you sell your experienced getting older star players of the 1st team to just prop the club up with talented youth for the future for when you leave for a new club ?

The reason I ask this is because I generally sell players once they hit late 20's and bring in quality youth between the ages of 16-19.

As I type this, I have just recently put in bids for up to 5 or 6 quality youth players aged 16-17 to come straight into the 1st team to replace players who are between 25-29 years of age, 1 of them includes my Midfield general who is also my Captain but who is 27. Now I know Midfielders are at their best 26-30. But I don't know why but I love to bring in talented youth players straight into my 1st team.

I guess it comes down to making my 1st team younger in aveage age. What it comes down to with the players I am selling, it's either another 5+ years of great servic and possibly 2-3 league titles or the potential for these players coming in for 2 seasons of getting used to European Football then possibly 10+ years of great team work which may indeed bring 5-7 league titles, but none for the 1st season or 2.

Anyone else do this and who have they sold and brought in as replacements ?

Screenshots would be good too.

Mind you, these players I am bringing in its the January transfer window with my Reading club on top of the league by 7 points, still in FA & League Cups and in the Knockout phase of the European Champions League

I prefer to bring in players in their mid 20's/latish 20's, whilst bringing through my own Youth from my Academy. Never tend to sign other youth players unless my scouts are literally insane about them and they're at a decent price.

It should really be a continuous process, so you don't have to end up having lots of "phases" where you have to make a big transition.

Yeah, I do that a lot. Don't like keeping old farts in my club

Basically, if I believe I can get a player of similar quality to the lad I have - I start thinking about selling. For example, I sold Dzagoev (bought for 16M) for 40M pounds. Replaced him with Vukcevic (15M), and I spent the rest on quality regens who will surely be first-team members in a couple of seasons. It's a never-ending cycle really, but it pays off big time and doesn't damage your results.

Same, I bought Love for 15, sold him for £40 million to Barcelona

Bought Tevez for 26, sold for 30 to Barcelona

Bought Srna for 12.25, sold to Inter for 30 million

Then bought in Keirrison, Saivet, balotelli for a fraction of the price. I love bringing youth through, especially when you win the league with a team of your players that have been at the club since 15-19.

Then bought in Keirrison, Saivet, balotelli for a fraction of the price. I love bringing youth through, especially when you win the league with a team of your players that have been at the club since 15-19.

I have problems selling my "old farts". Mostly because they too have been at the club since 15-20. So most of the time I know rotate.

Got to have loyalty and stability, most players don't decline much until around 33, by which time they should have been convinced to become coaches.

I always try to keep my older players, but only if i feel they will become good coaches/scouts etc. Long term i always tend to work 2 seasons in advance, bringing in youth or nurturing from my academy players that will be able to start stepping up in 2ish years. With regards to my first team, i'll only sell one of them if i have a youth that can step up straight away.

for me getting some of your younger players to break through to the first team is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game

in every FM i have played so far all my teams have huge squads filled with potential key players to the team.

if i want to keep older players they have an age limit of 29 maximum. and usually i have only one or two

current save squad has average age of 20 but its still early in the save

one thing i always found is that if i kept a squad with older players they tend to play ok. replace the squad with younger equally talented and the team is playing far better

I never buy anyone over 26 generally speaking, as it then gives me about 4-5 seasons at the very least. By the time they get to about 28-29 ive already got thier replacements lined up and usually being tutored. Ive never had a player get to 30 yet though. Id rather sell them why they is still viably attractive to other clubs to pay big money and use an equally good youngster instead.

Like to keep the majority of the squad young but I always get in a few older players for cheap prices or on frees to be backups.

I do tend to do this, as players get older they tend to be asking for 100k a week wages, its a simple way of keeping my wage-bill managable for me. Sell the veteran midfielder/defender and bring in a young replacement. I tend to sell players at about 28/29 and bring through someone much younger, but then buy others when they're 34/35 onwards. Done it with Ronaldinho, Steven Gerrard, Kaka, Petr Cech, Sebastien Frey, David Beckham and one or two more because they're good for mentoring youngsters and are good, cheap back-up.

the thing is old veterans are good for tutoring purposes provided they have the right mentality and stats so its quite a good idea to keep some of the older players just to be tutors to several youth players

I used to do this on previous games but I know feel it's more important to have the experience around, if you're trying to win trophies consistently. I always try to make sure I have youngsters coming through so that when my older players get to 30 ish, I have a replacement.

I'm now trying to see how much profit I can make with my next signing. I'm going to try to sell my captain which is also a MC, for 100m and buy his replacement for under 1m. Lets see how that goes.

I don't like yooves, so I tend to play with a lot of older players, even up to age 40 in some cases. (I'm at Milan so this is nothing unusual!) When I find players that I like, I keep them till they retire to hopefully become coaches. Once stamina declines they play roughly 1 in every 3 games and are on the bench for the other games.

In my Man City save Kaka is still playing for me at a fantastic level at the age of 34. He hasn't started declining massively yet, and recently scored a hattrick against Aston Villa in the league, so while he may be past his best he still has at least another season and a half in him of fairly regular first team football I believe.

i like to have a quite young team, but i try to blend the young and older players together. i'm also quite fond of keeping the older ones who give a long service to the club. one midfielder, i bought when in the bsp in my second season who played with me the whole way to prem and i had to fade him out then dump in the reserve team.

I have players that played 10+ years for my club. I just can't sell them now.

In my first season at a club, I tend to change the squad so there are two 11's. After the first season I just pick the two or three weakest players and replace them with younger players, so there are no big transitional periods after the first year. I also try to have a third team in the reserves who are made up of talented under 19's, this keeps the club strong for a long period of time.

every time i take over i sell everyone over 28 and replace with anyone under 25. dont know why i just do and it is always sucessful

Beckham is 35 and still a brilliant player on my save...

Beckham is 35 and still a brilliant player on my save...

Yeah I have a 32 year old Gerrard who has won Player of the Year 2 years in a row, and is beasting it up this season so why would i sell him? I do have a lot of young players that i have my oldies tutoring for the future though.

Depends who they are. For example Carles Puyol, no matter how crap he gets if he decides to play till he's 65 he'll have a place in my team. Or Xavi, Iniesta, Pique, Messi.

I do love bringing in/stealing the youngsters from all over but generally I won't sell my top players while they are still performing at their peak unless a youngster is better than, or at least pretty damn close to them, in their match ratings.

I admit that once a player hits around 28/29 I do look to ship them off but that is down to a combination that by then they are usually after a massive contract and also because from that that age their sell on value generally starts to depreciate and I'm a bit of a stickler for getting top dollar in (even though as we speak my QPR team has a transfer budget of £150M and the overall value of the club is almost £1B) for my players.

I send most of my youngsters out to my 2 main feeder teams in Spain and Italy's top division's (Parma and Valladolid) until they are around 19/20 at least as that gives them first team experience in most cases and helps boost their stats a lot quicker than them sitting in my U18 team and spanking the hell out of poor opposition.

Obviously there are a lot of different ways of doing things, thats the beauty of the game, but I just stick to the more traditional and realistic approach to management but I do know where you're coming from as there is nothing better than 'breaking in' a youth player and watching him become a world class player

Henri Saivet at 30/31 years old is having his best years at the club, and hes a god normally. Hes scored 13 in 15 games and set up 7 so far. Others have touched on this, so my word of warning is becareful selling players before their prime. But sell older players that you know wont play basically every game for you.

Also remember goalkeepers keep going for ages, Akinfeev is 35 and no hint of decline, besides the obvious speed physical stats.

Now I am back at Liverpool in the same saved game (it's now August 2032) I have decided this time around I am keeping my old players who have very good attributes. Out of my 23 1st team squad payers, I have 10 who are aged 30+, 9 aged 24-28 and the remaining & my other 4 are aged 19-22.

So I guess I have gone from 1 extreme to the other with my liverpool side now.

Have you heard of the Lisbon Lions?

They were a great team of players, all from the Glasgow region, who played for Celtic. Most if not all came through their youth system. Together, they won the Champions League in Lisbon.

One by one, the Lisbon Lions faded, and they in turn were replaced by other youngsters from Celtic's youth system. Kenny Dalglish, Lou Macari...

That's what you should try to do. Supplement, don't re-invent. When a player isn't as good as he once was, bring in a youngster in his place. Don't sell him so the kid can get in.

i have a cut off point of 30 which fabregas is just approaching, that way i feel ive got the best ue out of them and get the best money back, and invest all the money in youth players, i only spend about £15 on players a year an my youth team is awesome

i only spend about £15 on players a year

Is it possible to spend just £15 on players?

i think it all depends on the player and how close he is to a milestone (i know, it's sentimental, but i feel that the player would want to reach 100 goals or 500 games). In my current Liverpool game Ronaldinho (35), Barry (32), & Gerrard (34) are all still at the club, but generally just playing in the reserves and getting the occasional game, especially Stevie G, he's only a few games off 500 and only 3 goals away from 100, I aim to help him get both before he retires (i just can't see him ever leaving, he still earns $70k a week as a backup!) I also spent about $15M in 16 & 17 yr olds ready to replace my current starting XI within the next 6 years. by the look of the results (34 goals scored in 3 games in the U18s) the future looks bright for Liverpool!!

What I do is once a player turns 25 I send my scouts scouring for a youngster, if I dont already have one of sufficient potential in my academy, in the same position. I bring that youngster in and have him be tutored under that player. Most of the time they are then ready by the time the player is 30 or so to replace them, which means for me that I have 1 world class player who will soon be too old but is great and 1 world class potential substitute. It works out real well.

I focus on having a good mix of young and experienced players.

I usually sell my players once they are 30 or 31, but at times I might keep a legend until his playing days are over.

What I don't do is selling established first-team players to replace them by young talents. My talents are given chances to prove themselves but they will have to earn their first team positions over the current players.

Yet, if I know I have great youngsters in my team, I don't sign world class players even if I have the funds if I trust my young gems to develop into world class players too. So I don't create space by weakening my team, but I'm not blocking youngsters either and give them their chances to perform.