Can my U18's really be this bad?

I've not played FM much for the past couple of years, so this years edition is my first real exposure to rating/scouting stars and coach/scout reports.

In my U-18s (I'm a BSN team) my staff reckon that none of my 16/18 year old players have any potential (1/2 star) - at least one coach should be a fairly accurate judge.

I find this quite hard to believe that it's realistic that none of them will improve at all in the future, but in this situation should I just be releasing them every year?

Ta,

In my game I am North Ferriby and its the same as you say poor ratings for everyone. although on my game some of these half star players are ok and can cover for me in the league, ( I am in league 2 now) so they aren't that bad.

That's not unusual. Even the very best youth academies only produce one or two players good enough for the first team each year.

My team (first season) contains 4 or 5 players who are from my youth team (before the game started) and are no older than 23 they range from being first team regulars to backups for a mid table side. So thats say 5 players out of about 120 who would have come through the youth ranks in the last 5 years.

Based on that I'm struggling to understand that no-one in my youth team would have more than a 1/2 star - i.e. won't improve, never going to be anywhere near good enough for this league. I'd expect maybe to have 1 three star if I'm lucky, or at least a 2 star (good enough to be a backup).

Your team got 5 decent youth players in 7-8 years so you should be getting one decent youth prospect in something like two of every three years. Maybe this year is just not a good one.

Sometimes staff underestimate a player's potential as well so maybe you do have one who they haven't spotted. I have a player called Nikolay Ivannikov who all my staff gave three stars for potential. I have since been promoted twice and his current ability is three stars (i.e. way better than they ever predicted because star ratings are relative to the quality of your league).

Ok 2 points

- Should I just get rid of all those I think won't make it each year?

- I thought the coach/scout reports were relative to your current players, but the team report is relative to your expected league position?

I find it very hard to produce any sort of viable youngsters that are worth keeping around in this game. I can only hope i update my youth facilities in the near future.

I ignore the star rating system. Don't think it works well. Go with your own judgement of stats and good starting point starts for potential stars.

Scouts and star system not a strength of this game in my opinion.