What am I doing wrong with my scouts

I would like to know where I am going wrong with my scouting assignments. Im playing as arsenal and I am allowed a lot of scouts. In previous versions of the game I have had a scout assigned to each region of the world, and in FM11 I have tried to do the same.

The problem is, my scouts just dont seem to be going anywhere. I am in the end of 2013 and my scouts have been on assignent since the summer of 2010, which means they have been working on their assigments for 3 years. I wont post the scouts names, as I cant actually spell most of them, but I will give some examples of my issues.

Scout 1 - assigned to central america for 3 years - has only increased to half a blue bar on Mexico and has been scouting mexico for the last 3 years

Scout 2 - assigned to north africa for 3 years - has half a bar on morroco and sudan and is currently scouting sudan

Scout 3 - assigned to eastern europe for 3 yearss - has half a bar in greece (is that actually in eastern europe, I dont now if he actually came with that) and 3/4s of a bar in russia and is current assigned to russia.

I could go on, ive got 15 of them, a few of them have done really well, the scandinavia scout and the carribean scout have almost full blue bars in each country. In comparing the stats that I could think were even possibly applicable the scout assigned to scandiavia and the scout assigned to eastern europe have determination and motivating less than 2 points different.

My question is - is this wrong? or am I doing something wrong. Should a scout assigned to a region spend that entire 3 years soley in 1 county and still not even know all about it?

Scouts "learn" (or fill the knowledge bar) rather quickly. If you assign them to a country, they'll have perfect knowledge of it in the end of an assignment. However, what they learn in the game, they'll also forget really quickly. In my experience, only knowledge that remains with them, is the one they have at the start of the game, and one they get by going to a new club (if you sign a spanish scout for Arsenal, his knowledge of England will be perfect).

Also, you'll only find players from the countries with leagues loaded (and some from that has teams in European competitions). So there's not much point scouting Sudan unless you have their leagues in the game. Somebody with better understanding how this works can maybe elaborate further? (f. ex, if you didn't load Brazil at all, would there be any more regens from brazil?)

Therefore, this is how I do it (Newcastle, an European top team in my save):

-try to find scouts with knowledge from the areas I want to scout.

-then for each scout, choose 2 or 3 countries where they have best knowledge, and recycle him between those countries (the "restart" button in assignments helps that you don't have to spend half a minute scrolling everytime you want to scout Spain).

-For international competitions I have one guy scouting World Cup, one under-19 euro championships etc. That assignment can stay there between tournaments. Whilst tournament is on, the scout will carry on as normal with his country assignment. Which will lead into few days wasted for travelling, but that's lesser damage than me forgetting to re-assign him after the tournament.

Also (because I admire Wenger) I regularly filter player search with "younger than 18" and scout everyone who has a value over million (that's borderline cheating I feel, but then again that seems to be the only sure way to make sure you're aware of the freddyadus of the world, and in real life everyone is).

Also, you'll only find players from the countries with leagues loaded (and some from that has teams in European competitions). So there's not much point scouting Sudan unless you have their leagues in the game. Somebody with better understanding how this works can maybe elaborate further? (f. ex, if you didn't load Brazil at all, would there be any more regens from brazil?)

Now I would agree with this, but, it doesnt seem to pan out across those lines.

For example, I dont have any of the scandiavian leagues loaded, yet that scout seems to be working fine.

And if you then extrapolate that further and say, well scandiavia is working because as all the leagues im running are in europe they will have more players in them, then why is the carribean search going so well?

You are right - my african scouts have found utterly nothing - but im not necessarily worried about that bit, im trying to work out why their knowledge of areas is not increasing, would I actually be better off assigning them individually to scout the countries one by one?

Haven't played FM11 that much but it seems when a scout is on an "area" assignment they find very little compared to being given assignments for the countries within that area.

Haven't played FM11 that much but it seems when a scout is on an "area" assignment they find very little compared to being given assignments for the countries within that area.

Right - bugger it - im assigning to counties then!

On that subject - how long does an individual country search take?

Right - bugger it - im assigning to counties then!

On that subject - how long does an individual country search take?

FM10 used to tell you when the assignment started (Hopefully FM11 the same but I haven't really looked) and it seemed to vary by size of country.

Somewhere like Wales was only 10-20 days while Russia was around 275 days.

I used to assign scouts to around 4/5 countries that would take around a year to complete.

FM10 used to tell you when the assignment started (Hopefully FM11 the same but I haven't really looked) and it seemed to vary by size of country.

Somewhere like Wales was only 10-20 days while Russia was around 275 days.

I used to assign scouts to around 4/5 countries that would take around a year to complete.

275 days for russia sounds better than the current 3 years...

Just curious if your scouts that are getting more reports have higher determination and level of discipline? I think those two attributes determine how fast can a scout look up for a region.

I agree that searching on individual countries seems to give more reports overall.. though it's kind of boring when you have many scouts to have to keep restarting the assignments once they are done.

I noticed this as well. If you scout a region, it takes ages to gain knowledge for each country.

Scouting individual countries and knowledge is gained faster.

Just curious if your scouts that are getting more reports have higher determination and level of discipline? I think those two attributes determine how fast can a scout look up for a region.

I agree that searching on individual countries seems to give more reports overall.. though it's kind of boring when you have many scouts to have to keep restarting the assignments once they are done.

As per my first post, this seems utterly unconnected, all my scout have above 15 in determination (By chance rather than design) and all are above 10 in dicipline. There doesnt seem to be any correlation between the coaches that have done a lot, and those that have done bugger all, in referance to those stats.

Just to update - ive set my scouts to scout individual countries - and they are comming back almost weekly (Well 1 a week) to say they have finished their assignments.

thats just silly.