No chance of a small club signing a future superstar

My feeling is that there should be a blind spot programed into the big rich clubs alowing at least the odd potential 180 slip through the net,what i mean is not every ai team knowing about every high potential player as soon as there generated,maybe this could come from potential not influencing there choice of new clubs after all the player doesnt know he has potential 190 and most players who come through youth ranks arnt taken a risk on by top division clubs.

At present it feels like the game is tiered 150 pot plus go to championship clubs as soon as there generated 120+ 1st div ect ect.For me a little bit of magic could be brought back to the game if you where randomly scouting a but hole of nowhere place and you unearthed a 190 pot player who due to him playing in the vietnamese 3rd division would actualy consider joining a 2nd div english club.

Or maybe the balance would be thrown way off what do you all think?

i see were your going with it and i kinda agree in all my lower league games ive never had a youngster that could play at championship level let alone prem or become a star, people say it doesent happen as ofter nowadays,

yet in recent years my friend kightly (grays to wolves) kevin doyle, steve morrison, chris smalling, simon cox, bebe, i could name more.

i know these are not world beaters, but barring morrison (who could get his shot soon) are all playing in the prem

id love to get a hell of a gem at say southend, even if i couldent keep him id still make a bit of dosh

i fully support this. most high end player come from small clubs. not all is discovered when they are 17. all the best talents gets bought right at the start. i have never seen a really good newgen stay at his club for more than a season or two.

On this years FM I've seen more players work their way up than before, it will be harder and harder for players to go unnoticed these days because of the huge scouting networks out there. Some players are late bloomers but you need them to be undervalued enough to either slip through the grasp of a big club, which then they usually retire or to not get gametime at a side that perhaps then falls down the leagues. I've seen several players step up through smaller clubs in England alone.

The thing is, you do see some good talents released from good clubs, but if they go somewhere with poorer facilities, they won't reach their potential. For instance, I was playing as Dartford and was in my second season in League Two. I signed a released AML/C from Man Utd, and could have signed a promising striker from some club in Africa. The AML/C became a good premier league player, and I was glad to beat interest from other similar/better teams, showing how the lower teams do go for the regens released from prem teams.

The striker from Africa transferred twice; first to the French Ligue 1 (not sure which team), and then to Marseilles. I agreed contracts with him, but he continually failed to gain a work permit. This shows that 1) lower league teams do not have the scouting to find these players. When you start a game in League Two for instance, you are lucky if you can scout outside of Europe, so any finds are off your own back. For the AI, I doubt they sign obscure people as they cannot scout there. 2) If they will not get a work permit, they probably won't try. On the scout report it often says not to bother with trying to sign this player because they will not get a WP, so this may apply to AI managers too.

That's my opinion on it Although I think it would be more interesting if they did get better players through somewhere, even if there was the occasional gem in non-league.

I've had a 17 year old Spanish kid picked up for free at Torquay side, and At. Bilbao bought him for £325,000, though don't know what the potential rating is.

Signed a Scotsman from Inverness for £180k when I was a small sized Championship club. We're now in the Premiership and he's worth £15m+

There's plenty of players around 20 years old that get released by the top clubs despite having huge (150+) potentials, mainly because they've failed to develop quickly enough.

You do get high potential players playing for lower clubs though. They just either don't stay there long because they get bought up and want to leave, or they don't progress enough (because of the club's poor coaching/training facilities) to get noticed.