Regen Quality = attrocious

I reached 2012-13 (OK thats not that far) and regens are poor. Very poor.

What the hell is this? It is going to ruin my game. How can I play this as a long term game when RL players are head and shoulder above regens??

I scouted most of the 18 and 17 year olds and there is precisley one(!) player among them that has the potential to develop into a leading Premiership player. And even he has really weird stats that make me seriously doubt this.

Infact all regens have seriously chaotic stats. Too many are extremley low and the players develop at a snail`s pace.

What the hell?

How can I play this as a long term game when RL players are head and shoulder above regens??

Because by the time the whole game is regens, everyone sucks

It's high-time that SI seperated Physical, Technical and Mental stats into different CA/PA groups.

At the moment every player under 20 has the physical stats of Bernard Manning after a particularly large pie and chips.

VB

I agree, which is why I save my game right before the youth players are brought up so I can restart until there's a decent batch of youth players though.

I usually restart enough times so everyone in the Premiership has decent enough talent.

Is this because you are lookign at regens that havent been nurtured by clubs yet?

Can anyone who has played the game for a few seasons confirm if regens are indeed awful?

Id like to confirm cause otherwise it's going to be a waste of time playing it anymore

and...

It's going to make FML a complete waste of time because all the players in that will be regens quite quickly.

Is this because you are lookign at regens that havent been nurtured by clubs yet?

Can anyone who has played the game for a few seasons confirm if regens are indeed awful?

Id like to confirm cause otherwise it's going to be a waste of time playing it anymore

and...

It's going to make FML a complete waste of time because all the players in that will be regens quite quickly.

the original poster is probably looking at unfinished players (players who need much more work to be done). i recommend using mini scout and search for regens who has good potential and leave them in your reserves for 2-3 years and keep loaning them out for 2-3 years at the age of 21-23 they should be ready for your firsst team even the best team as a squad player

It does take ALOT of time though to train a regen which is very frustrating, because like bojan starts off with 130+ ca start off game, you be lucky to find any regen above 70+ ca at his age!

it takes roughly 5-6 years to train up a quality regen, also in most of my games i played so far theres always regens available who just needs polishing up

I am playing as Aston Villa in the 2017/18 season, I started with a lower team and joined about 7 years ago.

Using FMM I can see we have a reputation of 9542, which is no suprise as we are the best team in the world.

Youth setup at 20 and a youth academy.

I recorded the the youth talent over 8 re-loads in the 2017 summer.

Here is the spread of PA I got over the 8 reloads:

190-199 = 0

180-189 = 1 (184, so good enough to be a world star if he reached his potential)

170-179 = 1 (174, good enough to be a Premier star if trained up well)

160-169 = 1 (166 premier first team player)

150-159 = 23 (Most will be destined for League one or Championship football unless they reach their potential)

140-149 = 20

130-139 = 31

120-129 = 2

110-119 = 2

100-109 = 0

99 and less = 12 (including a 39!)

On average I had 12 regens come through the ranks, but the range was from 7 to 14.

No CA was higher than 85, with out using FMM or the scout reports I would never of known which players were worth keeping and who needed releasing on a free.

I checked back through all my old graduates on the transfers history screen:

Nick Eastwood is a D/WBL with a PA of 196 from 2016/17 season.

Tom Carr is a GK with a PA of 188 from 2014/15

Lee Reynolds plays for Blackburn as a DM and has a PA of 170, he came through the ranks in 2012/13

John Fortune is a Defender who has ended up at my second managers team in the Championship, with a PA of 177 and a CA of 147 he is a first team choice for them at the age of 22. He came through the ranks in 2011/2012.

Jon Roberts is a AML who has also ended up in the championship. Graduating in 2008/2009, his CA of 141 is still some way from his PA of 175.

Steven Hill who has now broken into my first team at the age of 23 has a CA of 162 and a PA of 199! He was a regen from Wolves in 2010/11.

So it would appear that you will produce one player with a reasonable PA (by reasonable I mean above 165) every other season.

The stats on the Regens above are all pretty good for their positions, meaning that my training and loaning must be working.

What was a surprise to me was the number of 130-159 PA players I have produced.

I disagree, strongly. I have played a game on FM08 up till around 2030 and have had GREAT regens, world beaters in RL terms too. Their natural fitness is the only stat thts seems trouble as it's always low. But regen quality is brilliant.

Neji - I urge you to look at my last post on this thread. The quality of Regens late in the game, is very, very poor. Perhaps you've been lucky to get good ones, but I've got 3 long term saves, and have discussed the area with friends who have long term saves, and we all agree the quality of players declines as the game goes on.

The problem is, as it was stated, the regens start with terribly low CA's making them very hard to get to reach their potential.

Saivet, Bojan, Sakho, Sankhare, etc. all start with CA's over 100.

I must have been lucky because in my long term game there was no shortage at all. In FM06 I found this a major problem but was entirely happy with the situation on FM08. I may load up another game on FM08 to generally mess about on so I will take another luck if I get round to it.

There is more to the quality of the regen then just potential ability. Stats play an important part in the game and I have seen players with just a PA of 160develop into a top player with top stats.

However, I think the regen situation can be improved. Right now, the regens have no identity or any traits that make them "special" or "different" from another regen.

For example, take Simao and Nani. Simao and Nani have near identical stats, but if one looks at them IRL and in the preferred moves section, Simao is more of a winger take hugs line and get crosses in, while Nani loves to cut in and shoots.

They both have different playing styles.

For regens, unless there is tutoring for them to learn these preferred moves, they just seems so alike and no different, like robots coming out from a factory.

I think part of the game we love, is finding a young player, nurturing him, getting to know his preferred moves, his personality and hearing that you are his mentor and his favourite manager.

Character development

I've been using Genie to check the CA/PA of regens every June 20th.

The pattern is that the proportion of high PAs does decrease significantly compared to the number at t he start of the game.

There are good regens with high PA but most of them are not in my team and are either dirty or injury prone or are defenders with 5 for positioning/concentration/jumping and pace or attackers without flair or technique. None of those attributes can be trained to a usable level for premiership.

I still wonder why young players don't start with all their non physical stats at 1 so you can build their position and stats with training.

*Youth academy and facilities are not worth the investment , if i am not going to have at least 2 guys with PA +180 and 5 with PA +160 every year then it is just not cost effective .

Academy & facilities at 20 equal with many international camps around the world from where only the best make it to youth team , getting guys good enough for the Somali Premiership is not balancing the game it is destroying it.

another problem is that the computer is **** at nurturing talent. in long term games they all eventually have old teams and are easily beatable (since you have managed to get every good young player).

The end result is that the game is far too easy after 8 seasons in and completely unplayable

someone was right earlier when they said seperate ca and pa for phy/men/tech. would make a lot more sense.

there is a cap on players technical, physical and mental ability and they are all at different levels.

I'm in 2014 and there are tons of great newgens. Barca just paid Leeds £21M for a 30 goal a season ST who they got for £3.2M a couple of seasons before. (I'm not managing Leeds in this instance). I'm at Chelski and had a 18m bid for a German winger rejected.

Peeking at my current squad with miniscout I have a DC with a 178CA and a ST with 182, and a couple of 19yr old reserves with 150-165CA and PA of 170-190! All from my scouting "network". Quite a few i've bought are topping out at 120, but I'll make some money off them by selling them down the leagues. Kind of wish I hadn't peeked now as I prefer to nurture them without doing so. Just wanted to check how "atrocious" the newgens actually are, and they're not bad at all. Physical stats are the main issue IMO, but not atrocious.

Apparently they get far, far worse in another 10-20 years, tho.

SI have said many times this is being reviewed for FM09, so it's an old issue.

Originally posted by turn it upto 11:

someone was right earlier when they said seperate ca and pa for phy/men/tech. would make a lot more sense.

there is a cap on players technical, physical and mental ability and they are all at different levels.

Definitely. I've had a number of newgens with world class technical ability, but so slow they may only have one leg, or so stupid (mental stats) they're registered disabled. I sold one 21yr old newgen with a CA of 150 and PA of 178 because he had incredible mental stats but poor physical ones.

I suspect the problem - past the 2020 mark - is that they develop only one area of their abilities instead of spread across the board. A DC with 20 in marking, heading, tackling, is pretty useless with 8 in concentration, positioning, anticipation and pace.

Right, as Gateshead I'm currently in the year 2025 and can assure you there are plenty of decent regens about. However there are definitely a number of problems with the pool of players in the future. Some of these problems have already been mentioned but I'm going to list them all again anyway:

1 - A lack of physical players. This is my biggest annoyence at the moment as now in my game it's almost impossible to find a strong physical player or a really fast player. There are plenty of regens who are excellent both technically and physically but who are ruined by the fact that they have below 8 for almost every physical attribute.

2 - A lack of wonderkids. There are no regens created with a high CA, so you never have an 18 year old wonderkid in your team in the future. The high PA regens are never actually good enough to break into the first team of a top club until they are around 22/23.

3 - The AI's inability to properly develop youngsters. One annoyance in my game now is the fact there are hardly any players left with PPM's. It seems that the AI is pretty poor at getting players linked together for tutoring purposes. So because regens aren't generated with any natural PPM's, by the time you get a smaller team up into a position where you could have players in your team that good enough to tutor your youngsters there are barely any decent players left who have PPM's to pass on. By the time you get to the point where only regens remain in the game the number of players with PPM's constantly gets smaller and smaller until eventually there will be none left.

Solutions?

I think it would be much better to have more high PA regens created, but for it to be a lot more varied as to which players actually reach their PA. This would mean a lot of potentially good players around but not all of them would be able to reach their potential. Personality and career shouold basically play a much bigger part in who reaches their potential.

Secondly there should be more regens created with a higher starting CA. This is definitely a must so that in the future you still get Bojan's, Fabregas's, Bolatelli's and Ronaldo's. You should also have regens created with a decent starting CA but a PA that is not too much higher to represent those players that look likt they will end up being world class but actually never turn out to be.

The other thing I think is needed is to have some regens created with positionally related PPM's already learned. This way there will be less chance of PPM's dying out pretty much completely in long term games and will again help there to be more wonderkids created.

The problem isn't a lack of high potential players, but development of their stats. In this version you have the lack of agility and balance, along with strange physical stats. Players with two good feet will usually struggle physically, which makes no sense at all.

Then there's all the extreme players with a couple of nice 20s, but with low numbers in lots of key areas. Perhaps most importantly though is that the free attributes and set pieces doesn't improve and that players go from their prime to their all time low in a very short time.

I'm all for templates.

Originally posted by chopper99:

1 - A lack of physical players. This is my biggest annoyence at the moment as now in my game it's almost impossible to find a strong physical player or a really fast player. There are plenty of regens who are excellent both technically and physically but who are ruined by the fact that they have below 8 for almost every physical attribute.

That bit should of course read 'Technically and Mentally'.

Originally posted by Themistofelis:

I still wonder why young players don't start with all their non physical stats at 1 so you can build their position and stats with training.

*Youth academy and facilities are not worth the investment , if i am not going to have at least 2 guys with PA +180 and 5 with PA +160 every year then it is just not cost effective .

Academy & facilities at 20 equal with many international camps around the world from where only the best make it to youth team , getting guys good enough for the Somali Premiership is not balancing the game it is destroying it.

Completely unrealistic expectations. How many clubs in the world have that sort of output of youngsters? None I would say. The closest anyone has come to that would be back in the early 90s when Man United got very fortunate getting a number of high quality players in one year. Other than that most clubs are lucky if they get 2 players into the 1st team each year, particularly at top clubs.

A potential of 180+ would be a potential world class player. Expecting to get 2 per year through your youth team is completely unrealistic.

Year 2014, the only player on my filter with 20 for pace is Agbonlahor - the ex-Vill-now-Arsenal player (£28m well spent on a 5 goals a season player, heh-heh).

Probably there are players out there whom I could scout but I should be able to see SOME players with 20 pace. Basic knowledge of the footballing world would suffice. Clubs in Spain knew about Walcott when he was at Saints.

Originally posted by The Lambs:

I am playing as Aston Villa in the 2017/18 season, I started with a lower team and joined about 7 years ago.

Using FMM I can see we have a reputation of 9542, which is no suprise as we are the best team in the world.

Youth setup at 20 and a youth academy.

I recorded the the youth talent over 8 re-loads in the 2017 summer.

Here is the spread of PA I got over the 8 reloads:

190-199 = 0

180-189 = 1 (184, so good enough to be a world star if he reached his potential)

170-179 = 1 (174, good enough to be a Premier star if trained up well)

160-169 = 1 (166 premier first team player)

150-159 = 23 (Most will be destined for League one or Championship football unless they reach their potential)

140-149 = 20

130-139 = 31

120-129 = 2

110-119 = 2

100-109 = 0

99 and less = 12 (including a 39!)

On average I had 12 regens come through the ranks, but the range was from 7 to 14.

No CA was higher than 85, with out using FMM or the scout reports I would never of known which players were worth keeping and who needed releasing on a free.

I checked back through all my old graduates on the transfers history screen:

Nick Eastwood is a D/WBL with a PA of 196 from 2016/17 season.

Tom Carr is a GK with a PA of 188 from 2014/15

Lee Reynolds plays for Blackburn as a DM and has a PA of 170, he came through the ranks in 2012/13

John Fortune is a Defender who has ended up at my second managers team in the Championship, with a PA of 177 and a CA of 147 he is a first team choice for them at the age of 22. He came through the ranks in 2011/2012.

Jon Roberts is a AML who has also ended up in the championship. Graduating in 2008/2009, his CA of 141 is still some way from his PA of 175.

Steven Hill who has now broken into my first team at the age of 23 has a CA of 162 and a PA of 199! He was a regen from Wolves in 2010/11.

So it would appear that you will produce one player with a reasonable PA (by reasonable I mean above 165) every other season.

The stats on the Regens above are all pretty good for their positions, meaning that my training and loaning must be working.

What was a surprise to me was the number of 130-159 PA players I have produced.

That seems like a fair spread to me. Your youth team has produced 6 potentially international- to world-class players, which when you consider real world youth teams I think you'd consider that a pretty good outcome.

Also I don't think it's surprising that the majority of the players are between 130-159 at all. I would expect to have a fair number from this catagory with excellant youth facilities. A potential around 130 would suggest a decent Championship level footballer, whilst 140-150 would be a decent player who could play in the Premier League.

I think you should be fairly pleased if most of your youth products end up playing at that level, seeing as IRL only a small number will end up playing in the top 2 divisions.

Totally agree

http://community.sigames.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5211026...012026204#4012026204

Originally posted by KK2003:

Completely unrealistic expectations. How many clubs in the world have that sort of output of youngsters? None I would say. The closest anyone has come to that would be back in the early 90s when Man United got very fortunate getting a number of high quality players in one year. Other than that most clubs are lucky if they get 2 players into the 1st team each year, particularly at top clubs.

A potential of 180+ would be a potential world class player. Expecting to get 2 per year through your youth team is completely unrealistic.

Who the hell cares about realism ? i am paying for state of the art youth facilities and demand to get world class players every year.

At least there should be an option for the assistant manager " if he is not going to be top don't bring him to my club ".

From what i've seen (very little) the regens do degrade and there isn't much argument to say they dont.

But people wanting as many as 1 player of over 180 PA in about 3 years is odd. imo Excellant facilities aught to bring in a lot of possible mid table players and 1 or 2 good prem players.

To want more is silly and whoever wants to eradicate realism is stupid. thats the whole idea behind the game...

Originally posted by Themistofelis:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by KK2003:

Completely unrealistic expectations. How many clubs in the world have that sort of output of youngsters? None I would say. The closest anyone has come to that would be back in the early 90s when Man United got very fortunate getting a number of high quality players in one year. Other than that most clubs are lucky if they get 2 players into the 1st team each year, particularly at top clubs.

A potential of 180+ would be a potential world class player. Expecting to get 2 per year through your youth team is completely unrealistic.

Who the hell cares about realism ? i am paying for state of the art youth facilities and demand to get world class players every year.

At least there should be an option for the assistant manager " if he is not going to be top don't bring him to my club ". </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Who cares about realism? It's a football management simulation, its aim is to be realistic. Do Ferguson or Wenger demand that they get world class youngsters through the academy every year? Their clubs are paying for state of the art facilities after all.

Tell you what, why don't we just have it so the only youth players that come through all have a PA of 190+? Then you can win everything without trying, it'll be loads of fun :thumbup:

I don't think I've seen a more ludicrous post on these boards, and I've read a lot of posts.

Originally posted by backpackant:

SI have said many times this is being reviewed for FM09, so it's an old issue.

Well, it is new for me.

Am I sorry now I deleted FM2007 along with my 2018/19 save game...

I agree with this aswell. The quality of regens is really poor and you hardly get any "world class" regens.

What i have done is found that you get quite a few Regens every year that start at the age of 20 and have a CA over 100, normally between 100-110. So what I do is load up FMM and decrease there age to 17. Giving them an extra 3 years to develop without making the game unrealistic because it still ties up with there history stats. The only difference is they entered the game at 17 instead of 20. Then if trained right by their current clubs they can become a wonderkid by the time they are 20. I have also done this for 19 year old being entered into the game as regens. I decrease there age by 2 years to 17

Originally posted by DJ Complete:

I agree with this aswell. The quality of regens is really poor and you hardly get any "world class" regens.

What i have done is found that you get quite a few Regens every year that start at the age of 20 and have a CA over 100, normally between 100-110. So what I do is load up FMM and decrease there age to 17. Giving them an extra 3 years to develop without making the game unrealistic because it still ties up with there history stats. The only difference is they entered the game at 17 instead of 20. Then if trained right by their current clubs they can become a wonderkid by the time they are 20. I have also done this for 19 year old being entered into the game as regens. I decrease there age by 2 years to 17

That's all well and good, but surely you'd need to increase their PA for this to have any effect whatsoever? Decreasing their age won't make them any better potentially.

Originally posted by KK2003:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by DJ Complete:

I agree with this aswell. The quality of regens is really poor and you hardly get any "world class" regens.

What i have done is found that you get quite a few Regens every year that start at the age of 20 and have a CA over 100, normally between 100-110. So what I do is load up FMM and decrease there age to 17. Giving them an extra 3 years to develop without making the game unrealistic because it still ties up with there history stats. The only difference is they entered the game at 17 instead of 20. Then if trained right by their current clubs they can become a wonderkid by the time they are 20. I have also done this for 19 year old being entered into the game as regens. I decrease there age by 2 years to 17

That's all well and good, but surely you'd need to increase their PA for this to have any effect whatsoever? Decreasing their age won't make them any better potentially. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think he's talking about using this method to create a more realistic amount of wonderkids, i.e taking regens that start of at 19/20 and have high PA, but because of their age are given a higher starting CA than your usual 16 year old regen. If you then reduce this players age to 17 using FMM the you can actually have players younger than 20 who are good enough to be in the first team.

Quite a good idea, unfortunately I've never used FMM before so it's out for me. Also it doesn't solve the problem of these players having poor physical attributes, which they inevitably will.

unfortunately you cant use fmm on the mac. i used to use it when i had a pc to "fix" regens. If you reconfigure a lot of regens and not just the ones you own or are intending to buy then it doesnt feel like cheating.

things to do - drop all regen dc's corner taking to 1 - frees up PA for other more relevant attributes. it is probably worth doing this for many players actually

ditto with long throws - you need very few players with good long throwing, and certainly dont want your strikers or attacking midfielders to have their PA wasted with a ridiculously good ability to throw the ball. I wouldnt be suprised if the barrel chested mr rooney can throw the ball well, but you will rarely see him do it in a real game.

boost a great many defenders jumping to at least 15 - that way they can be half decent, same goes for strikers.

and increase the CA ofalot of the players with high PA. a player with a PA of 199 but a CA of 50 may never amount to anything - if you boost his CA to 100 + he may.

Originally posted by chopper99:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by KK2003:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by DJ Complete:

I agree with this aswell. The quality of regens is really poor and you hardly get any "world class" regens.

What i have done is found that you get quite a few Regens every year that start at the age of 20 and have a CA over 100, normally between 100-110. So what I do is load up FMM and decrease there age to 17. Giving them an extra 3 years to develop without making the game unrealistic because it still ties up with there history stats. The only difference is they entered the game at 17 instead of 20. Then if trained right by their current clubs they can become a wonderkid by the time they are 20. I have also done this for 19 year old being entered into the game as regens. I decrease there age by 2 years to 17

That's all well and good, but surely you'd need to increase their PA for this to have any effect whatsoever? Decreasing their age won't make them any better potentially. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think he's talking about using this method to create a more realistic amount of wonderkids, i.e taking regens that start of at 19/20 and have high PA, but because of their age are given a higher starting CA than your usual 16 year old regen. If you then reduce this players age to 17 using FMM the you can actually have players younger than 20 who are good enough to be in the first team.

Quite a good idea, unfortunately I've never used FMM before so it's out for me. Also it doesn't solve the problem of these players having poor physical attributes, which they inevitably will. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly. I do a search on Regens that came in that year with a PA higher than 170+ and at the age 19-20, I then drop there age to 17 giving them more time to develop. I have seen quite a few wonderkids come through at several clubs.

I know it doesn't take the fact away that you shouldn't have to do it, it should be ok in the first place, but it makes the game more enjoyable for me.

I've seen this brought up countless times, but I've never had any problems with it despite playing to 2030. I've had promising youngsters, ones who have flourished despite me thinking they had no chance, and ones I had earmarked as potential stars turn out rubbish. I've had wonderkids too - Piet van Kesteren, a left winger was a first team regular for me in the Serie A from age 18, as was one of my AMCs from about 19 who went on to have a ton of 20 ratings.

The only issue I've found with it is that exceptional pace seems to be so rare, and oddly weighted. I signed a player who had 19/19 for pace and acceleration and was rated generally as the best player in the world - I never checked his CA, but I'd think it must have been ridiculously high. The only thing is, he had very poor stats for every other position, and his striking stats peaked at 16. Clearly so much of his CA went into his pace that his others were clearly lacking.

Generally, I prefer regens to real players a couple of years in, since its been realistically researched that players with top ability will have some weaknesses in their game, defenders with poor concentration particularly. So long as they're tall enough, regenerated players generally tend to be very well rounded.

The CA/PA system is not a very good way to judge player utility.

A high CA means that the stat average is high. It says nothing of the player's ability to play any position well.

Anyone who's read Kipfizh's AI experiment is familiar with Maia, a new/regen who, despite a fully realized PA of 199, could never break the 7.0 AvR threshold. This was because his stats were distributed very evenly, meaning that the stat concentration necessary to be elite at any position was lacking.

Anyone who is looking at CA/PA is using some third-party database analysis software (Genie Scout or whatever). Try sorting by positional ratings. You'll find that, even at the start of the game, many of the best players at any position may only have PAs of 170. This is because, despite an overall lower average stat rating, their stats are concentrated in such a way that allows them to excel in specific roles or positions.

Make sense?

Originally posted by KK2003:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by The Lambs:

I am playing as Aston Villa in the 2017/18 season, I started with a lower team and joined about 7 years ago.

Using FMM I can see we have a reputation of 9542, which is no suprise as we are the best team in the world.

Youth setup at 20 and a youth academy.

I recorded the the youth talent over 8 re-loads in the 2017 summer.

Here is the spread of PA I got over the 8 reloads:

190-199 = 0

180-189 = 1 (184, so good enough to be a world star if he reached his potential)

170-179 = 1 (174, good enough to be a Premier star if trained up well)

160-169 = 1 (166 premier first team player)

150-159 = 23 (Most will be destined for League one or Championship football unless they reach their potential)

140-149 = 20

130-139 = 31

120-129 = 2

110-119 = 2

100-109 = 0

99 and less = 12 (including a 39!)

On average I had 12 regens come through the ranks, but the range was from 7 to 14.

No CA was higher than 85, with out using FMM or the scout reports I would never of known which players were worth keeping and who needed releasing on a free.

I checked back through all my old graduates on the transfers history screen:

Nick Eastwood is a D/WBL with a PA of 196 from 2016/17 season.

Tom Carr is a GK with a PA of 188 from 2014/15

Lee Reynolds plays for Blackburn as a DM and has a PA of 170, he came through the ranks in 2012/13

John Fortune is a Defender who has ended up at my second managers team in the Championship, with a PA of 177 and a CA of 147 he is a first team choice for them at the age of 22. He came through the ranks in 2011/2012.

Jon Roberts is a AML who has also ended up in the championship. Graduating in 2008/2009, his CA of 141 is still some way from his PA of 175.

Steven Hill who has now broken into my first team at the age of 23 has a CA of 162 and a PA of 199! He was a regen from Wolves in 2010/11.

So it would appear that you will produce one player with a reasonable PA (by reasonable I mean above 165) every other season.

The stats on the Regens above are all pretty good for their positions, meaning that my training and loaning must be working.

What was a surprise to me was the number of 130-159 PA players I have produced.

That seems like a fair spread to me. Your youth team has produced 6 potentially international- to world-class players, which when you consider real world youth teams I think you'd consider that a pretty good outcome.

Also I don't think it's surprising that the majority of the players are between 130-159 at all. I would expect to have a fair number from this catagory with excellant youth facilities. A potential around 130 would suggest a decent Championship level footballer, whilst 140-150 would be a decent player who could play in the Premier League.

I think you should be fairly pleased if most of your youth products end up playing at that level, seeing as IRL only a small number will end up playing in the top 2 divisions. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I am pleased with the level of players produced.

My surprise was with the high number of 130-159 PA players, I actually expected less than that.

So far the regen system seems to be working fine on my game.

Originally posted by Themistofelis:

I still wonder why young players don't start with all their non physical stats at 1 so you can build their position and stats with training.

*Youth academy and facilities are not worth the investment , if i am not going to have at least 2 guys with PA +180 and 5 with PA +160 every year then it is just not cost effective .

Academy & facilities at 20 equal with many international camps around the world from where only the best make it to youth team , getting guys good enough for the Somali Premiership is not balancing the game it is destroying it.

You expect to have a Beckham, Scholes, Giggs, Butt, Neville(s) year every year!? Crazy. Most Premiership youth teams will look to produce one player per year who is good enough to come through to their first team at some point!

The problem with regens is not their PA its their CA, they have CA so low they will never get anywhere near their PA

I've honestly never had that problem at all. As San Marino I've been signing up foreign youngsters and keeping them in my U20s squad until they get a passport and I can call them up - keeping them quiet so that Brazil dont notice them. All of them, just from very limited exposure to any first team football at all, have ended up at 23 more than good enough to fit into my youth team, and most of them from there then exploded with first team football and got even better. I've not found it a problem in the slightest of players failing to reach their potential, unless I were to use a scout program and take a look at the PA and see if any of my ex-youngsters I've released have shown a very well hidden talent that I missed.

I've never once looked at the CA or PA numbers, and never once found any sort of issue about it. Top level players are still top level players regardless.

there was always at least one recommendation by my assman with my new youth intake every year, but after finally improving arsenals youth facilities, the quality of regen has been better than potentially great. two of them could even provide adequate backup for the first team.

personally, i prefer finding gems at lower league clubs and turning them into superstars. i've never been able to do this in england, a few times in spain, but moreso in italy (since fm06).

there have been better quality players produced by lowere league clubs than some premier league clubs irl, so it should be the case in FM. providing that regen development is improved in fm09.

I didn't play FM 07 long enough to evaluate regens. Were they as bad in FM 07 as FM 08?

Wrote a similar post elsewhere: It is possible, but you need the correct players. It vaguely matches the scarcity of youngsters in the world - one or two Messis, lots who will reach 150-160 and tons who are rubbish.

Originally posted by x42bn6:

It is possible but you need the correct youngsters.

A thread I wrote up which seriously helped me develop 17-year olds with CA about 130: http://community.sigames.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1519717/m/4982007304

Basically, in terms of CA, this is what you need to aim for:

15: 70

16: 90

17: 120

In these age brackets, this is where you can almost guarantee that their CA will reach 170 if they can make it into a first team. However, there seems to be only one with such ability in each season - Arsenal have one with a 17-year old CA 110, and there's a Sporting CP 15-year-old with CA 79 (PA 194).

My only issue with regens is the sheer lack of players with good Jumping - I once had a good centre-back with a Jumping attribute of 4! Or perhaps physical attributes in general, which are hard to develop without too many injuries (which in turn harm development, which is ridiculous).

Originally posted by Law_Man:

You expect to have a Beckham, Scholes, Giggs, Butt, Neville(s) year every year!? Crazy. Most Premiership youth teams will look to produce one player per year who is good enough to come through to their first team at some point!

The thing is that i never play in England , you shall see the regens in Belgium , Greece or Norway , after only few years there are not any good domestic players around. Not good enough for the bench i mean.

Often i can only register 17 non national players for European competitions and hope that none gets injured.

When my team has an average PA around 170 i expect my assistant manager to hire youngsters of equal quality.

Ass man is supposed to go around and look for raw talent just like the scouts do , scouters will never point me to a player with PA 120 why should my ass man go and hire such a player?

Originally posted by Themistofelis:

The thing is that i never play in England , you shall see the regens in Belgium , Greece or Norway , after only few years there are not any good domestic players around. Not good enough for the bench i mean.

Often i can only register 17 non national players for European competitions and hope that none gets injured.

When my team has an average PA around 170 i expect my assistant manager to hire youngsters of equal quality.

Ass man is supposed to go around and look for raw talent just like the scouts do , scouters will never point me to a player with PA 120 why should my ass man go and hire such a player?

Why is you Ass Man hiring players for you in the game?

By your logic then the top teams should only ever have youngster in their youth teams that are definitely always going to be world class. And the Assistant Managers of these teams should always be able to accurately predict which youngsters will turn into world stars?

As I said earlier there are plenty of aspects of the regen side of the game that can be improved. That being said I don't want it to get to the point where as long as I have top class facilities I'm guarenteed 4 or 5 players every season that will become top class. That's just not realistic in the slightest.

The regen quality is slightly off, I have only adequate youth facilities but in iceland, the majority of my regens are coming through at 4 - 5 stars with the potential to be leading players in this league, not just one or two, but the majority and with money coming in from europe and improving facilities, it seems only a matter of time before my youth development is practically producing the players for most teams in the coming years.

Originally posted by santy001:

The regen quality is slightly off, I have only adequate youth facilities but in iceland, the majority of my regens are coming through at 4 - 5 stars with the potential to be leading players in this league, not just one or two, but the majority and with money coming in from europe and improving facilities, it seems only a matter of time before my youth development is practically producing the players for most teams in the coming years.

Not sure about that being a problem. The star system is the quality of player relative to your squad, which therefore also means relative to your league. I'm guessing here, but wouldn't 'adequate youth facilities' be pretty good in Iceland, therefore you should be producing good youths relative to other Icelandic sides .

So, if you do become a super-club in your league the idea that you'll produce the best youths, the cast-offs whom will populate the lesser Icelandic sides seems reasonable to me.

Originally posted by chopper99:

Why is you Ass Man hiring players for you in the game?

By your logic then the top teams should only ever have youngster in their youth teams that are definitely always going to be world class. And the Assistant Managers of these teams should always be able to accurately predict which youngsters will turn into world stars?

The youngsters are always hired by the assman, it is a game concept .

A scout can tell if a 17 year old have the potential to be a good player ,why my assistant can not do the same for a 16 year old one?

You didn't understand, not only i am not getting any good players but i also get guys with PA 70, for Zeus shake i have PA 70 !

I think i have to write it again, Academy level 20 = tens of camps around the planet = many thousands of kids = only the best make it to the youth squad = how the hell a CA 40 / PA 70 one managed to pass the door of my training center?

If we took like 500 renegs every year i could accept some crappy ones but since we only get ~10 they have to be at least of some quality.

What a club considers as quality defers by the average PA of their squad.

I know what you're getting at handy, but I'm thinking a little bit differently, whilst obviously players from iceland can be as good as players from brazil, italy, spain etc in theory, the fact of the matter is, these players coming through, if they attain their potential (as i've gone to a championship team and scouted them) will go from first team players being suitable to the blue square, to a few players being touted at league 1 level.

So the problem seems to be that regardless of the fact im at a small part time club in iceland, the players who were 16 in the first season, were already outclassed by 16 year olds coming in during the second season.

Odds are with some investment my team will end up dominating this league, and the money from being in europe 2 seasons in a row is funding a lot of growth other teams cant afford.

Obviously, these players coming through will be rarer to be wonderkids than in England & other top countries, but odds are in 10 years or so the future of icelandic football internationally and domestically will probably be my teams cast offs & successes.

Originally posted by Themistofelis:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by chopper99:

Why is you Ass Man hiring players for you in the game?

By your logic then the top teams should only ever have youngster in their youth teams that are definitely always going to be world class. And the Assistant Managers of these teams should always be able to accurately predict which youngsters will turn into world stars?

The youngsters are always hired by the assman, it is a game concept .

A scout can tell if a 17 year old have the potential to be a good player ,why my assistant can not do the same for a 16 year old one?

You didn't understand, not only i am not getting any good players but i also get guys with PA 70, for Zeus shake i have PA 70 !

I think i have to write it again, Academy level 20 = tens of camps around the planet = many thousands of kids = only the best make it to the youth squad = how the hell a CA 40 / PA 70 one managed to pass the door of my training center?

If we took like 500 renegs every year i could accept some crappy ones but since we only get ~10 they have to be at least of some quality.

What a club considers as quality defers by the average PA of their squad. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is what I'm on about, I've dug out the FMM editor and a lot of my players first team PA is 60 - 80, the regens coming through have PA's of 80 - 100 on the whole part with facilities of 9.

So, how the hell am I producing in mass bulk better regens with worse facilities than the guy above lol