Suggestion: Youth Academy Preferences

Newgens usually appear in your youth team aged between 15-17 years old. Most players will obviously be at a club from a much younger age, and so the game basically simulates their time before they appear in the youth side.

As a manager, I think it'd be useful (and realistic) if you were able to set a preference for your youth academy which slightly biased the type of players you'd get as newgens, to match your football philosophy.

So at a very simple level, let's say you get to choose between:

-balanced

-physical

-technical

-tactical.

If you chose balanced, your newgens would have attributes much as they do now, largely determined by what position they play. If you chose to emphasise physical development, they'd be *slightly* more weighted towards having better physical attributes at the expense of technical and mental/tactical attributes; whereas if you chose technical, they'd be *slightly* more likely to have good technical attributes, etc.

You get the idea. Not a huge change, but something which would add a bit of a personal element to youth development.

I like this idea. I would also like the ability to choose positions to concentrate on. Nothing worse than having 6 fantastic goalies, but nothing else.

Love it

although i'd also like to see younger players/teams on FM (apparently there are child protection issues, but why don't we just have made-up players?? it's not like anyone's gonna care about some random 12 yr old not bein on the game, is it?)

It's something that would need to be done gradually- for example, I don't think we'd have any say on how the first batch of regens develop, because they'll be too far along already.

A spanner- how much do real first team managers have to do with academy development? Would that not be to do with the academy director and the youth coaches?

for the idea but only if there is some randomness for exp if i choose tactical it would be unrealistic all of the players to be better in mental stats then technical or physical.

Also there must be an option to invest into young talent younger then 16-15 even if we dont see the players in game but the more we invest,better newgens we get unlike the current system where only youth facilities are taken into account.

A spanner- how much do real first team managers have to do with academy development? Would that not be to do with the academy director and the youth coaches?

I'd expect managers at top clubs to have some sort of input in to it, if not the overall say.

The other option would be to have an academy director as a member of staff, with their own preferences for one particular style. Or I suppose to just bias attribute balance depending on the skills of your youth coaches in each training area.

The main thing for me is to try and have clubs produce slightly different types of youth player. At the moment, the only difference between the players that Barcelona and Blackburn produce is in how good they tend to be (CA and PA) rather than in what type of player they tend to be (attribute balance).

for the idea but only if there is some randomness for exp if i choose tactical it would be unrealistic all of the players to be better in mental stats then technical or physical.

They aren't going to necessarily be better in mental as opposed to technical or physical, but say for example instead of doing weights training for 2 hours in the gym one day they will instead watch a match and analyse it.

The main thing for me is to try and have clubs produce slightly different types of youth player. At the moment, the only difference between the players that Barcelona and Blackburn produce is in how good they tend to be (CA and PA) rather than in what type of player they tend to be (attribute balance).

This

this thread contains some of the best ideas I have seen

I like the OP's ideas alot, but instead of making new staff titles, why don't they have more importantance on youth coaches? I would like to see more impact from them. I like the importance and types of players coming through, it would be difficult to make them one type of player to the other though. For example, Manchester United's golden generation werent all the same type of players were they.

In agreement. This is a pretty good idea. Let's hope SI take a look at this one.

I think Academy Director (or Youth Team Manager at academy-less clubs) would be a fantastic way to influence regen development more directly. In addition your overall scouting rating (knowledge + combined stats of scouts) should influence the number of quality regens you get and where they're from.

The OP has a very good suggestion here, I like this idea, I'm sure there is more fleshing out to do, but definitely a good start.