Feature Suggestion: Overhaul of Scouting and Youth Team Management

At this time in Football Manager scouting and Youth development is an all or nothing "hands on" process where you the user either micro-manages each specific detail of what is going on or you the user misses out entireally. If you are playing the Blue Square South where you have one scout that cannot leave the country and no real youth team that is not a problem. If you are a World Class football club with 18 scouts around the globe and upwards of 30 youngsters on your books at any one point it is a nightmare.

The fundamental problems with youth management in FM are that there are no indications or clues as to how to proceed with effective youth management, and once a system has been figured out by the user and put into practice there is no autonomy. It is entireally possible to design robust and effective means of managing youngsters but every single decision and every single minor detail must be made and carried out by the manager. In short you cannot delegate the burden of monotony to your backroom staff.

Now I do not claim to know how World Class scouting networks or youth development systems function in real life but I know they exist and I know that the minor details are independant of the Manager. The Manager has the plan, the rest of the staff organise it and carry it out. What I do know is how Scouting and Youth Development works in Football Manager to a reasonable degree, and I do know some common practices and the basic principles behind decent setups.

Hearts of Iron III has recently been released with a new hierarchical AI system where the user delegates a region of operation to the AI, assigns the AI some objectives and places some Units under the control of the AI and the AI then attempts to complete it's objectives. What I am proposing is not a rip-off of a complicated wargame AI but a good look at its basic principles of giving an objective, giving some resources and letting the AI do the micro-management.

Scouting Network

Currently in FM09 you can scout the entire planet, regions, nations, leagues, competitions, clubs, individual players and your next opposition and you can define many particular attributes such as age, value, nationality and ability for the scout to only report back when these variables are met. You can custom design a huge quantity of scouting assignments and construct elaborate scout networks to meet your every need. The only problem is that you have to manage every single assignment by hand no matter how similar they are or no matter how they all fit into a single plan. If you want to send ten scouts to ten different regions at the start of each season to canvass the entire planet and build-up your scouting knowledge then you musy custom design ten near identical assignments, and then change the region focus at the start of next season or when your knowledge is maxed. If you then want to send a high quality scout to check out the reports coming back in more detail, you must again choose every single scout assignment for him. If one of your guys reports back on 10 players from Africa, that is ten scout missions you have to assign to your Head Scout.

Imagine for example that a good scout network in FM09 consists of the following:

18 Scouts.

1 Scout for Next Opposition.

1 Scout for Reporting on Loaned Youngsters.

1 Scout unassigned for sending to better judge other scout reports or players that take your fancy.

5 Scouts checking out various U-18 leagues in the top divisions of the top footballing nations.

10 Scouts scouring all the regions of the world one after the other to maximise your scouting knowledge and database.

Now imagine you are running 50+ leagues and so have a vast number of international competitions from under-18s to the World Cup in each Off-Season, so you unassign all these scouts at the end of the season, re-assign them to competitions, then unassign them from these competitions as they end and re-assign them back to their original assignments at the start of the new season.

Effective and robust but by God is it tedious work that no Manager on the planet actually does. Where is the Head Scout doing all this work for you? The guy that sets up the particular instructions, hears back about a great prospect and flies out himself to check the guy out first-hand?

What is needed is a completely revamped scout screen and scouting system.

Point Number 1. Most players will have one key scout that they rely on for accurate information and most players will send this scout to report back on scout reports from other scouts.

Point Number 2. Most players will send groups of scouts to do similar tasks.

Point number 3. Those players not yet bored of the micro-management will have secondary tasks for certain groups of Scouts to do in the off-season and revert back to similar or identical assignments during the actual season.

Point Number 4. Scout Assignments may vary in specific target but most scout assignments will never vary in actual objective.

Scouting in FM09 is crying out for a system of automisation of tasks.

Suggestion

What I suggest first and foremost is the creation of the position of "Head Scout" which the player assigns to a particular scout. This "Head Scout" will receive scout reports from other scouts and scout these players himself. The manager can dictate the behaviour of the Head Scout, whether it is simply a report card or a 3 match observation. Whether he reports on every single player directly or only on those he thinks have high potential, high ability, are under 18, are EU nationals, are available for less than £10 Million etc. I do not want the guy that is filling out my Scandanavia bar to keep informing me with his 1 JPA and 1 JPP of a 38 year old 90 CA Striker, nor do I want to give him some rediculous variables that means he never reports back and so misses an actual gem.

What I next suggest is a system of Assignments that scouts are added to or removed from rather than Assignments given directly to scouts. I create the Assignment "Under-18 Leagues" with the parameter of under-18s in my nation, or under-18s of highest reputation leagues, or under-18s of similar reputation leagues and I add scouts to this assignment. Within this assignment I can set how often a scout changes the league he watches, so my one scout might cycle between the three under-18 leagues nearest to mine in the league structure every season or every month. My three scouts might cycle every 3 months. My five scouts might never cycle at all. My 10 scouts that are scouting "Regions of the World" might move onto the next region every 6 months.

Next I select a secondary Objective for this Assignment. The secondary Objective might be under-18 international competitions. It might be reserve leagues. It might be Strikers in the first team league. When there are no under-18 matches being played my Scout will carry out his Secondary objective.

I could setup an assignment called "Youth" where I am scouting the under-18 leagues of all the leagues in my nation with the Secondary objective to Scout the under-18 International competitions and add 5 scouts to it that report to my Head Scout and let it run for 10 years, doing everything I wish and only getting reports back of the actual gems, and having to never do anything to this Assignment again other than add another scout when someone retires or leaves my club.

Indeed I could reach the Premier League from the BSS and simply alter the assignment to scout equivelant reputation leagues rather than leagues around me in England, and have all five or ten or twenty scouts instantly adapt and perfectly adapt to my needs.

In my opinion this is the kind of thing that is needed. It almost already exists, but the game forces us to give scouts assignments rather than give assignments scouts. A subtle variation would make the world of difference, and a few logical options like Head Scout filtering out scout reports is pretty much what everyone does anyway, without the 25 clicks every week or so.

Youth Development

The current tactical slider system gives the user a huge quantity of possible behaviours for his players and gives no clue as to how they function or what is best. The new Tactical Creator takes this system, reduces it down to a series of logical steps and understood concepts and builds the tactic according to your wishes and not your experience, while further using the same principle to allow a multitude of on-the-fly in-match changes with two clicks of the mouse.

The current system of Youth Development or the options available to the manager for dealing with youth lets the user construct vast and elaborate systems of youth development and management with the particularly attentive and creative users producing "youth factories" of cycling loans and mentoring, feeder clubs that give the manager the ability to handle many more youngsters than he actually has the space to deal with at his own club and the ability to grant every single player the necessary level of football for CA development.

The only problems with the game with regards to youth development is that is does not give most users the slighest clue as to how to progress and it offers no autonomy or escape from micro-management hell for those that have figured out the potential of the options available.

My youth team plays less games than my first team so I have less players in my youth team than in my first team so I can mentor every single youngster at my club with a first team member. I get no advice as to whom the ideal mentor is, I get no warning as to available mentors for particular positions and I don't ever get informed that mentoring actually might be useful.

My epic scout network has furnished me with amazing players and I am walking the Youth League when someone turns 17. I am not told that he playing at a level far below his ability, I am not told he can now go on loan, I do not get told of what level he ought to play at, and I am not told of clubs that are ideal for him. My assistant manager is on £27,500 a week and he is useless.

So each season I have to figure out all this stuff myself, work out the capability of all my youngsters first hand, custom design the mentorship of each player and often end up with several unmentored players because I used up the only available mentor before. At each transfer window I send all my recently turned 17 year olds out for loan and I must go through the squad of each and every loan offer for each and every player to make sure I am not sending a guy into the under-18s of a Championship Club.

I'm playing Liverpool reserves on Wednesday but my 6 star potential Striker is at 87% condition because he played against Hull under-18s on the Saturday! I don't have the time to manage every single game player by every single player at my club.

I sign a JPA/JPP 20 coach because my scouts cannot scout my own team and this guy doesn't want to be a scout. He is a coach that does no coaching but he is my eyes and ears when it comes to knowing my youth team. Yet I have to ask this guy his opinion on each player.

Point Number 1. Most users have a particular level of Age and Ability at which they send players on loan.

Point Number 2. Most users want significant feedback on youngsters progress.

Point Number 3. Most users lack an understanding of effective means of development.

Point Number 4. Most users lack the time or patience to carry out effective measures of longterm development that reap significant rewards.

What is needed is a way of automatically handling age and ability. What is further needed is a way of using staff members in the very vein they are hired for while reducing micromanagement.

As before the entire problem is one of options and automisation. When it comes to player development and youth team management the game is not aware of its own ability and potential and so it offers nothing to those managers that understand what it is capable of, it offers nothing in terms of optimisation of time and so fails those with less time and less patients, and it offers nothing in the way of options that might give those seeking good youth development a clue as to what is available.

What I suggest is an overhaul of youth development and youth team/reserve team management.

Suggestion

My first suggestion is the construction of a functional backroom team devoted to managing Youth and Reserve level football. The options that currently exist are limited beyond all accuracy and functionality and are of great detriment both to immersion and game functionality. My personal opinion is that attention to both the simulation of backroom roles and functionality in terms of the players options and autonomy would be a significant increase in immersion of the game. Currently you cannot develop youth to an adequate level without paying an extraordinary quantity of attention to detail. To me this looks like a failure of the development team to comprehend what the game actually offers, no disrespect intended.

The functional backroom team would simply consist of roles defined by the user with options for each role customised by the user. You could have simply the Youth/Reserve manager, or expand this to include the Reserve/Youth manager, Reserve/Youth scout and Reserve/youth coach. For simplicity and development complexity sake the Reserve/Youth manager would be the best option but it would remove some level of excellence through provoking compromise in ability.

Dealing with the Youth Team Manager, you would assign a Coach this particular role and his role would consist of options set by the manager. Currently we have the options for Tactics/Friendlies and Contracts. These are incredibly limited.

The Youth Team Manager role should offer and automate the user defined options of when to send a player on loan versus keeping them in the youth team or when to promote a player to the first team. It should define what quality and quantity of football the user is looking to supply to a player.

Examples would be:

5 Star CA and 7 Star PA for the first team = Promote to the First Team.

4 Star CA and 7 Star PA for the first team = Send on Loan to a club in the same league.

3 Star CA and 7 Star PA for the first team = Send on Loan to a club 1 division lower.

Age limit to keep in Youth Team = 16/17/18 etc.

Automatic Assign First Team Mentors = Yes/No.

Highlight Player to Play Regularly = Tick box selection for entire youth team.

Select PPM's to Teach Role = Drop Down menu for Role and tickbox selection for available PPMs.

Reserve Condition for First Team Cup Games = Tickbox selection for players.

Report detailed information of players performance = Tickbox selection for each player.

I am running out of steam with the post and have missed many essential options for Reserve/Youth team management I will no doubt wish I had added later. Suffice to say this game provides an impressive array of options and potential for Scout Networks and Youth Development but there is no automation designed where automation and delegation clearly exists, and there are few indicators as to the potential options this game provides within the game itself.

A simple change in perspective for existing options, or an increased quantity of common and logical options in other areas would, in my opinion, do an immense quantity of good for those tired of micro-management and those completely oblivious to the potential of this game.

If you have read this far then thank you for your time.

I have read the scouting ideas you posted which so far seem much needed to make the game more realistic (with the head scout idea) and less(what can I say?) 'clicky'.

I read through the post, and I do agree, it does make the game more realistic.

Some of the points you mentioned are very good, and some I raised earlier in a less wordy post called 'Assistant handling loans'. When you have a lot of youth players at varying stages of their development, it would be useful if your assistant could come to you, telling you some are ready for first team football at a lower level ie on loan, some need to stay in the youth team, some would benefit from tutoring etc.

It would add a good dimension to youth development and a new aspect to running a football club and interacting with your backroom staff.

I also want more from the rest of my backroom staff.

I want my physios to come and tell me about players with recurring knocks, if they are injure prone, get jaded, need regular rest. I want the fitness coaches to say that my style of play means that some of my players tire out too quickly and are struggling to play 90 minutes. Or some of the weaker players are getting involved in too many strong challenges, increasing their risk of injury.

I want my assistant to tell me more about my squad's general personality and attributes and what it means. I want him to suggest that because I have a team with very high physical attributes and aerially strong forwards, we should be playing a more direct style.

Or, that one of my AMC's and FC's are linking up really well together in training, and perhaps we should play them together in competitive matches and focus our attacks through them.

A head scout or director of football, or technical director, etc, would be a great addition. He can then filter through your numerous scout reports and bring to your attention the ones that are most important (basing it on player potential, what positions the club needs filling, your style of play and formation, the squad personality, the transfer and wage budget, and any specific requirements you gave him)

This way you never have to ream through all the scout reports, but just focus your attentions on the specific few, thus narrowing down your targets. This can then be split into a 'general shortlist' of all players he thinks are good additions, and a 'working shortlist' of the targets he feels the club should most focus on, based on the requirements you gave him.

So in conclusion you've raised some good points, I hope they are read.

Great idea's, realy like the scout part as I do feel it needs a revamp

Would definitely go for those ideas, so much time and effort is wasted by scout reports filled with 1 and 2 star rated players. Surely it must make more sense for scouts to only bring to your attention players who could actually make your first team.

Fantastic post, agree entirely

6 out 6 positive so I reckon that's worthy of a bump.

I have read the scouting ideas you posted which so far seem much needed to make the game more realistic (with the head scout idea) and less(what can I say?) 'clicky'.

Amen.

Fantastic ideas. This is the kind of suggestions I pray that SI read. It would be fantastic if someone from SI could acknowledge this ideas

Great ideas. My view is that anything that the AI teams can do, you should be able to delegate to your staff. I'm not sure how able the AI is of figuring out appropriate levels of competition for youngster, but then you can always determine the rules for them to follow. This kind of revolution will most likely not make it into FM2010, but hopefully the next iteration will look at ways of automating the game much more.

I think the OP is spot on - there must be a lot of casual gamers out there who never make the most of scouting or training, which is a real shame.

Real life clubs have varied specific roles for its staff, and FM doesn't really reflect this very well just now - good examples being maybe Frank Arnesen at Chelsea, Sven at Notts Co... Certainly having Chief Scouts and a degree of intelligence and automation would go a long way to improving the situation.

Superb suggestions in theory. The practical problem is one you alluded to in passing. Currently, the AI doesn't do a great job on the Assman (even after a quantum leap forward from previous versions). Thus, it would be a programming devil to get a Head Scout or Youth Manager to work in a way that doesn't leave you chucking your laptop out the window.

Presumably you're looking ahead to FM11, in which case the development team have time to focus on the next big idea in depth. As we see with media conferences, these things need to be done properly.

Awesome post. I agree completely. The backroom staff is an annoyance imho.

I always get angry at my Ass Man etc. when they don't really do a thing and still want insane wages. There's so many things that the staff could be helping the manager with but they're pretty much worthless/useless atm.

Speaking of the staff... They really need to be more 'equal' stat-wise.. If stats actually matter that is.

Of course Man Utd probably have a bigger and better backroom staff than AGF from the Danish PL (or any other lower league club) but the difference isn't THAT big. They all wen't through the same international standard training after all. I'm tired of having 15 staff members who are useless when I start a new game. Even a team like AGF doesn't have GK coaches with abilities in the 2-5 range. A person like that would never even get a job as a GK coach in a semi-professional club.

It would be great if SI would revamp the entire backroom staff part of FM. It's really bad as it is right now.

Speaking of the staff... They really need to be more 'equal' stat-wise.. If stats actually matter that is.

Of course Man Utd probably have a bigger and better backroom staff than AGF from the Danish PL (or any other lower league club) but the difference isn't THAT big. They all wen't through the same international standard training after all. I'm tired of having 15 staff members who are useless when I start a new game. Even a team like AGF doesn't have GK coaches with abilities in the 2-5 range. A person like that would never even get a job as a GK coach in a semi-professional club.

It would be great if SI would revamp the entire backroom staff part of FM. It's really bad as it is right now.

This is partly a research problem. Because researchers are usually not present when their team is training, they can't rate coaching attributes properly and leave them blank which often result in random, low numbers in the game.

Well, it still needs to be looked at. The starting staff is often under contract for 3 years and there's no way a lower league club could afford to fire them all.

Having a club full of talentless staff for the next 3 years isn't a fun way to start a game.

SI should have imported the OOTP scouting system when they owned that game. Its very simple, whilst at the same time plays a very major part of the game.

For example, The head scout will comile a monthly report of your entire roster, and also of the league etc, without you doing anything - they just did their job. Also, it had current rating and potential rating, eg, stuff = 19 (20) - the potential being in brackets.

Of course, the current rating depends on the quality of your scout to assess the player, so in FM this system would mean your striker may have a real rating of 15 for finishing and a potential of 17, but your scouts assesment says 14 with a pot. 18.

You get the idea I hope, but the best thing was - very simple for the player.

I really agree with the OP, the idea of a head scout is a sound one. I always have one scout who because of his ratings acts as my head scout, i.e I send him to scout players that other scouts looked at, players on the transfer list, etc. Great idea IMHO

The OP is spot on, IMO. It's slightly annoying that, for the youth development in particular, a lot of the system is already in place. The game already generates coach opinions on players' CA and PA and it should be fairly simple to set up some basic instructions about what to do once players reach certain CA thresholds (as noted by the 1-7 star ratings you get from the coaches).

The loan system in general is a little restricted too. I want to be able to specify the preferred conditions when I offer a player out on loan. I often have young players I want to loan out for first-team experience but all I get is teams offering to play him as back-up. Why can't I set that parameter when I set him up as available for loan in the Transfer Status screen?

I agree with the scouting thing too, and the best suggestion is to have assignments that you add scouts to as opposed to the other way around. Again, there's a lot of this already there in the game, it just needs to be brought together into a usable system. Ideally the game would come with a whole bunch of defaults (search for talented youth, search for players below a certain price, etc) that you would simply add to an assignment with one click.

I am not really sure about this I might be wrong but doesn't staff wages affect the entire wage budget of a club. If so surely having 18 scouts plus a good selection of coaches at least around 12 or more is going to have a massive drain on your budget. My point is that I would like to see the budget sepperated into a playing budget and a non-playing budget. So you can keep track easier and manage your backroom staff at a better level.

As I said I might be wrong as I am sure someone will put me right.

I don't see the need for either feature tbh. The first is little more than a shortcut system, it makes things easier regards clicking the mouse, but doesn't add anything to the game (other than a scout becoming Head Scout). The second feature is ok, but completely ignores the position of Youth/Reserve team manager, which raises the issues of whether or not first team managers have this much say irl, or do they trust their staff, staff they have hand picked.

The ability to set up a "scouting base" is important. There is no real scouting network in the game, just lots of scouts running around. What I'd do:

- Coaches, managers and physios should have very little scouting knowledge - certainly not 100% for their nationality. Exceptions should exist like Wenger for France, but not even Wenger has 100% knowledge of French talent.

- Scouting knowledge should be part of the club as well. Scouts can build their own knowledge up and this contributes to a global pool for the club - when the scout leaves, that pool of knowledge shrinks as a result.

- Scouts should never have 100% knowledge of major countries like France or Brazil, as there are simply too many players.

- The setting up of scouting bases in other continents will help. The external bases will manage themselves (you budget them) or you can override them if necessary. As they are based in a foreign country their travel costs will come down and the wonders of email mean that there's less of a delay. If a base becomes too large the base may divide itself up into major countries, so you may have major bases in Brazil and Argentina, with one main South American scouting base which also does scouting in the likes of Peru and Uruguay.

- Scouting knowledge should decay a lot slower.

Major clubs should have scouts pretty much permanently in certain major countries rather than them moving around all over the place. I read the other day SAF talking about his scouts based in Scotland (in reference to finding fewer and fewer good players). This will be the same for lots of other countries, they will either have a scout or contacts which alert them to promising players and then they send out their head scouts.

A big club IRL is not going to stop finding out about stars because at that time the scout is in a different part of the world or you have forgotten to renew their assignment

Fantastic Points made there.

Should be implemented imo.

Scouting is one of the best parts of the game, Looking for some new Wonderkid in the Peruvian 2nd division or what ever.

Major clubs should have scouts pretty much permanently in certain major countries rather than them moving around all over the place. I read the other day SAF talking about his scouts based in Scotland (in reference to finding fewer and fewer good players). This will be the same for lots of other countries, they will either have a scout or contacts which alert them to promising players and then they send out their head scouts.

A big club IRL is not going to stop finding out about stars because at that time the scout is in a different part of the world or you have forgotten to renew their assignment

The wonders of email mean they don't have to return "home" either. They could scout and send weekly reports, for example.

The thread has been tagged, looks like SI have taken note of this!

And rightly so might I add!

I am not really sure about this I might be wrong but doesn't staff wages affect the entire wage budget of a club. If so surely having 18 scouts plus a good selection of coaches at least around 12 or more is going to have a massive drain on your budget. My point is that I would like to see the budget sepperated into a playing budget and a non-playing budget. So you can keep track easier and manage your backroom staff at a better level.

As I said I might be wrong as I am sure someone will put me right.

The staff wages are not part of the wages budget in the game. That is the budget for players only, but the wages do get paid, so if you are paying a lot of staff high wages it will hurt the bank balance.

Glad you guys see the same value in a tweaked scouting system as I do, so I hope no one is upset about this bump.

I have another suggestion for youth team development. Just a minor one but I think it could be both useful and realistic.

"Mike Phelan has reported back that John Fleck is not getting enough match experience to continue his development and recommends sending him on loan to Crewe Alexandra"

Or indeed when you click a players profile and go to "coach report" it says XXX thinks that player YYY has the potential to be a key member of the first team squad/should offloaded as soon as possible. What it should say is what do with the guy.

"Phelan believes YYYY has the potential to be a good player, and should be promoted to the first team for match experience/sent on loan to a first division club to continue his development"

Hard to code? Perhaps. Incredibly useful? I think a resounding yes. Anyone else agree?

Great post this, the scouting is a brilliant idea that I think is needed as a natural progression in FM. This would also expand the usefulness of the staff aswell.

The youth developement idea is also a good one and its something that is a bit lacking in FM at the moment. I would love to get more feed back on the youth team players and an easier way to develope them, I think this could be the way to do that.

good post with some great suggestions!

The staff wages are not part of the wages budget in the game. That is the budget for players only, but the wages do get paid, so if you are paying a lot of staff high wages it will hurt the bank balance.

I think they are actually. I get a noticeable decrease in wage bill if I release unnecessary staff members (at low levels, any more than one coach, one physio, one ass man and two scouts).

ward76: SFraser suggests those numbers for an elite club- obviously that would be impossible for even an Everton sized club. I'd still think that 18 scouts is a bit much and especially 12 coaches, but if that's how he operates and the board are fine with it...

Staff wages are in your budget I am pretty sure of that.

It depends how much you want to invest in your scouting system really, you can get decent scouts for 2k a week or less if they dont have a high rep. If you are a team like Sunderland you get a wage budget of 600k so it would be up to teh user how much to put towards the scouting network. I usually have 8 scouts and 10 coaches at most top level clubs thats if its Barcelona or Sunderland.

Solid suggestions, but I think the only weakness (which has already been pointed out) is that the AI isn't quite competent enough yet to handle it's business, much less the player's. Although these are great ideas to put on the backburner until the AI is capable of accurately making these decisions for AI controlled clubs.

Of course that goes more for the youth development than scouting. Creating scouting assignments and then choosing which scout takes that role would be a nice touch for efficiency's sake.

ward76: SFraser suggests those numbers for an elite club- obviously that would be impossible for even an Everton sized club. I'd still think that 18 scouts is a bit much and especially 12 coaches, but if that's how he operates and the board are fine with it...

What are you on about? My lowest paid scout is 25% better and on less than one third of the wage of Evertons lowest paid scout. I have 4 scouts with both JPA 20 and JPP 20 on a combined wage of £1400 p/w.

And what about this for lowest paid physios?

They both exist at game start and Everton could easilly have signed them before me but Everton didn't sign them and so one of the biggest clubs on the planet is paying peanuts for some of the best staff in the game.

It is a completely rediculous criticism that size and quality of staff is restrained by finances or that large compliments of staff produce excessive wage bills or indeed that it is financially wasteful to fill your quota of coaches and scouts. The only retraints on any club are numbers allowed by the board, club reputation and the efficiency of the manager. Ofcourse poor managers will produce bloated wage bills and have lots of rubbish staff around doing very little but that is their fault. The only significant wage mistake I have made so far was failing to get Paul Scholes weekly wage down to around £10,000 before he retired, so that when he became a 6 star ball control coach (one of the rarest staff in the game) I ended up having to pay him £60,000 a week. That is a failure of attention to detail that my wage budget was more than capable of handling because of the fact I am paying incredibly low wages by Premier League standards to incredibly good staff across the board.

The fine details of club organisation and backroom staff management is one of the most rewarding aspects of the game, hence this thread. The game needs both more options and control over backroom staff and club roles, while also requiring more autonomy of time intensive and tedious or irrelevent task management.

Solid suggestions, but I think the only weakness (which has already been pointed out) is that the AI isn't quite competent enough yet to handle it's business, much less the player's. Although these are great ideas to put on the backburner until the AI is capable of accurately making these decisions for AI controlled clubs.

Of course that goes more for the youth development than scouting. Creating scouting assignments and then choosing which scout takes that role would be a nice touch for efficiency's sake.

Very true, but the origins of task based, heirarchical AI are emerging with the new Tactics Creator and it's AI function in FM10.

I like the idea of scouting bases.

In Scotland, clubs like Rangers and Celtic have various 'under 16' teams all over the country, where they take the cream of the talent from. Aberdeen have one in Aberdeen, one in Glasgow, and now one in Edinburgh, Hibs and Hearts have several. Would be good if you have the ability to set up bases in other countrys/regions/cities.

Either that or more ability to scout other regions of countries, when I play as Aberdeen, very few youth players appear from outwith local towns, where in reality most of Aberdeens promising kids often appear from Dundee and Glasgow.

Come on lads, one tag and bottom of page 2 is not good enough for what the overwhelming majority thinks is atleast a necessary issue to look at.

Don't let this die. It wont happen if we don't make a fuss.

Scouting in FM09 is crying out for a system of automisation of tasks.

Most users want significant feedback on youngsters progress.

Those two sentences about sum it up. Great post. Well thought out and worth considering for the SI Boys.

I have one minor criticism; when you mentioned your Ass Man being more of an assistant, I mainly want to put the thought out there that I do not want this game to ever get to the point that doing well is simply as easy as hiring a good assistant and doing everything he says.

Agree with everything, though. The problem with this thread is that there's little room for discussion because the OP was so well put together.

Great ideas. Delegating duties to the chief scout, youth team manager etc. and it automatically gets done.

It would be really sweet if the back room staff also provided you with feedback and tips on what's going on and what you should be doing.

Those two sentences about sum it up. Great post. Well thought out and worth considering for the SI Boys.

I have one minor criticism; when you mentioned your Ass Man being more of an assistant, I mainly want to put the thought out there that I do not want this game to ever get to the point that doing well is simply as easy as hiring a good assistant and doing everything he says.

Agree with everything, though. The problem with this thread is that there's little room for discussion because the OP was so well put together.

Thanks for what you say and agree with the points you make, but I would point out that I was on the my 6th when I wrote the youth team entry, there must be a better system than the failed copycat drunken replica of my scouting suggestions when it comes to youth team management.

Good post though and it definately raises some important points.

Great post. At the moment my scouting for youth is to list every player <16 years old in the player search, get scout report on each then sign any that are >5 stars. long, cumbersome and fills your inbox with too many reports (you do get rewarded though). This way with a head scout seems much easier and with the youth team coaching going hand-in-hand seems to be the logical choice

few queries ...

1) if a system like this was available for us, the ai would use it too ?

2) if the ai uses it too, would this fix the AI's pathetic longterm squad building/management ?

These ideas would really help newer players like me tap into the potential of these vital but confusing and unexplained parts of the game. I also understand the concern of veteran players in having assistants tell you what to do to succeed. Surely all these things can be made optional?

A very good and comprehensive post. I hope it is looked at and absorbed.

Perhaps it could tie in to a more comprehensive new backroom system, where the backroom is envisioned as an organisational unit as opposed to unrelated individuals. It would give you some incentive to take parts of your backroom with you to a new job.

Edit: Or even have a system of hierarchical synergistic bonuses, a bit similar to HoI3, which was mentioned before.

few queries ...

1) if a system like this was available for us, the ai would use it too ?

2) if the ai uses it too, would this fix the AI's pathetic longterm squad building/management ?

The AI doesn't need this because it already has access to this information and doesn't need to save clicks.

No, this wouldn't solve AI squad building problems. That would need a rewrite of that section of the code.

2) if the ai uses it too, would this fix the AI's pathetic longterm squad building/management ?

You could in theory have SI develop several basic styles of backroom organisation and scouting networks and then add them to manager profiles like preferred formations etc.

This way someone like Wenger might for example only ever use two pre-defined Assignments, one for youth players in the nation of his current club and one for youth players around the world, whereas perhaps Ferguson might prefer to scout established talent from his current nation and youth talent from around the world, and so these managers will just keep chucking scouts into these pre-defined and profile preferred assignments.

Imagine for example an AI's manager profile says "Scouting Preference: Established Domestic and World Wide Youth." You would then know he prefers the Alex Ferguson style of looking for players.

Now I don't know how much the AI see's the world of players in FM. They might know every single player in the game, and even if they only scout these guys they might buy anyone else and render the issue moot, so it might not be so useful or even easy to add for AI managers, but I am sure many people could see how it could eventually add more realism to the game AI if AI scouting policy and AI transfers were reworked in this manner at some point in the future.

Very good suggestions SFraser.

The downside is that we´ll have to wait atleast untill FM11 release to see if they are implemented or not.

I completely agree, right now the reserve/youth portion of the game is completely ignored by the vast majority of players. You get U-18 match reports, but why not get monthly league/cup performance reports complete with monthly best players?

Why not create a Youth tab in the confidence tab? No need to rate week by week but maybe based on the above monthly reports? It doesn't need to be significant enough to get you anywhere near sacked, but enough that the board and the fans bring it up. Make the Youth and Reserve leagues worth winning. If my team wins the U-18 league 3 years running I want that to affect whether Youth Players and Youth Coaches want to join me. Arsenal could finish 10th this season in the PL, but every kid in England will still want to be in their academy.

Furthermore, youth coaching needs to be better explained in the manual/tutorial. It's clear that youth players' stats don't improve at anywhere near the same rate as a professional 17 year old, so why not draw a player's attention to the fact that while a youth player is on a Yth contract that they should concentrate on tutoring and new positions?

Another way the feedback from this area of the game could easily improve is the media side. Tying in with my confidence idea above, why doesn't the specialist football media give you news items about the hottest prospects? "Macheda lighting up the Reserves" or youth players giving news items beyond the "can't wait for debut" news when they sign. If we decide to make Academy performance a factor in youth joining, feedback in news like "Baxter left Everton for Arsenal after Arsenal Under 18'a 1-0 victory over Everton in the Youth Cup final"?

Fantastic post though mate, this is the area of the game that interests me most, I love raising youth.

If my team wins the U-18 league 3 years running I want that to affect whether Youth Players and Youth Coaches want to join me. Arsenal could finish 10th this season in the PL, but every kid in England will still want to be in their academy.

Slightly flawed because Arsenal don't win the youth and reserve leagues

You get my point though, mate

Perhaps a separate Academy Reputation number is in order? Set at the start by researchers based on youth produced and milk cups/u-18 leagues/FA youth cups won and then increased/decreased based on performance.

The total academy reputation figure would be roughly half of the equation when dealing with youth players joining on or from Yth contracts, with the clubs total reputation being the other main factor.

In this way, clubs who don't normally win things on a senior team but who are renowned for their youth production, can produce quality regens and have a bonus to attracting them too.

Massive post but the ideas in them are definitely worth including