Non-league - player regions

I brought this up on another thread already, but as the database expands and people add lower and lower levels to the game, surely non-league players and clubs (and even lower-paid League Two players) should have a 'home region'.

If you're manager of Redditch United, you simply can't sign a free agent who lives and works in Torquay on a £150-a-week part-time contract, you have to get your players from the surrounding areas. Similarly, you would struggle to attract someone who has a job in Torquay earning £20k to move to Redditch for a £300-a-week full-time contract.

At present there is such a huge pool of free agents at the lower levels that it's easy to bring in a whole new squad a lot better than you start with, when in reality 95% of those players wouldn't sign on the grounds that they are based hundreds of miles from the club.

This isn't just a factor at that level. It can cause players not to sign for L1 and L2 teams, even some Prem players have not moved for similar reasons. Its something I always thought needed looking at.

This isn't just a factor at that level. It can cause players not to sign for L1 and L2 teams, even some Prem players have not moved for similar reasons. Its something I always thought needed looking at.

Indeed, a northern-based player on £600 a week in L1 who gets released is going to want to sign for another northern club unless it gets to late July and the only club who offers him a contract is Leyton Orient.

It would also have to be based on age, a youngster just let go by QPR and who is desperate to stay in the game might move to Barrow for example to get first-team football, but a guy of the same ability who's 35 with a mortgage and a family, who gets released by Crawley is unlikely to want to sign for Barrow.

even some Prem players have not moved for similar reasons.

Some of you may remember Joey Beauchamp...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Beauchamp

Valid point, Freedman, and it is something that would raise the joyous realism of managing in the lower divisions to a higher level.

I seem to remember having written a post about this several years ago: I had the idea at the time of making a major empirical survey of structures of territorial migrations in English lower leagues for the sake of convincing the producers to look into the issue. Sadly it never realized, but maybe this version of the game, with its simply fantastic possibilities for people to delve into the basements of the pyramid, can create a demand for such "player regions".

It of course makes good sense, but how to implement it? Interviewing each and every player about his favoured territory is of course impossible. The migrations could however be generated automatically according to a few factors: a) the geographical coordinates of current club (already stated in the editor), b) past migrations denoting a pattern, c) level and ability (the higher it is, the more possible are global migrations), d) percental allowance of other "various" migrations.

Take also into consideration other countries where regional differences and topographical conditions play a greater role than in England. Simulation of such factors in the game would be highly interesting.