What to do with all the prospects?

I am playing with Arsenal, and have a whole reserve and youth squad with mainly nothing but hot prospects.

But I'm not really sure what to do with all the players to give them the best chances of developing into star players.

If I keep them in my youth or reserve squad the will get top class training from the coaches in the club.

But if I send them on loan (to everything between Blue Square Premier and lower Premiership teams) they will get regular first team football.

So, what to do?

Send them on loan only to clubs who say they will feature in their first team, and have good training facilities.

Can't help thinking you've just asked a question whereby the answer, in a nutshell, is absolutely the entire point of Football Manager. You make decisions such as that.

But, since you ask, I'd look at each one on merit. There may be pros to sending players out on loan, but I personally would keep the top prospects within the club. Especially with a set-up like Arsenals, they will get the training they need.

Keep them in your U18s for as long as you can and look to loan them out to the sort of clubs arsenalboy mentioned when they can no longer play for your U18s.

loaning players out never worked for me ever, and keeping them in the under 18 squad was no good either my advice is try and put them in your first team i know you can only have some that u can do that with but the experience they get is huge

I do a bit of both things. Keep them in my Arsenal team to benefit from coaching, learning PPM's and Tutoring, until they are age 20, or 19 if they look like a decent player already.

Then I offer them on loan but only accept bids from clubs who will play them in their first team.

If they are already good enough to be a squad player in my first team, then I don't bother loaning them out.

One thing I make sure is that my reserves and youth team always play one match a week during the season. That means going into fixtures and arranging friendlies to fill in those weeks when there are no reserve or youth league matches.

This is helpful not just for your youngsters but for ensuring that your injured first team players regain match fitness quicker, through choosing the

@The Gaffovski

you right..I'm also make sure all my non-senior players play in friendly matches every weeks to keep their fitness. Also, if some of them got superb form & superb rating after played in friendlies then I will give them chances in 1st team appearances to attract other clubs or to allow them gain experiences.

I hated that I started my long-term game on FM09 unpatched and the Portuguese League had no reserve league in that, and no reserve teams either, so I ended up struggling with my squad players fitness and also with them being able to stay happy.

But yeah i find rotating the youth into the senior squad seems to work the best. And its sorta one week in a senior game one week in a U19 or Reserve game.

I've found it's actually better when the other teams come and offer to loan them rather than you offering to loan them out. Sometimes it pays off to loan them even if the other team says they are going to be a squad member.

In FM09, I bought Jonny Evans for AC Milan in Jan09, knowing that he wouldn't be playing much. He featured twice in the team, and did alright. The next season, he still didn't look like making the cut. Quick check told me that he was still at around 155CA, about 20CA less than Nesta. To top it off, his stats were not all that impressive. Man City came knocking, wanting a loan to buy, saying that he was only going to be a squad player. I had a look at the Man City team and saw that he was actually close to being a starter. I took a gamble and loaned him out but taking out the buy clause. REgular checks on him told me that he was getting a decent number of games as the season went on. When he came back my coach rated him as the teams best defender. Checking on FMRTE told me that his CA had risen to 180, a massive increase of 25CA. Two years later I repeated this with Everton youngster Jack Rodwell, and he also had two-digit increases in CA after being on loan to Newcastle for the season.

My point is, don't be afraid to take a gamble. Sometimes its ok to loan a player to a team that might not guarantee them first a first team spot, because that might make them work harder, and AI managers are generally more adept at developing players than humans are.

There are a lot of myths and unknown facts about the loaning out/developing players thing.

Some say that the facilities don't make a difference, only the club reputation does. Most agree that first team matches are an important thing. But then they argue whether the player should have that experience on a level that matches his abilities or in a league as high as possible. The player performance seems to be another factor to player developing.

Some say that players loaned out to a club that doesn't play in a simulated league is the most useful whereas others argue it isn't of any use. Has anyone ever made tests on that?

Some say that players loaned out to a club that doesn't play in a simulated league is the most useful whereas others argue it isn't of any use. Has anyone ever made tests on that?

This here could be a very interesting idea for an experiment in FM10, maybe create Several players the same for one position same CA and PA and everything else and test it by loaning them to a range of places. Could make for some interesting results.