Part time Contracts v Youth Contracts

Can anyone tell me which is better for a player's development?

I'm at a part-time club and signing a 16-year old player who requests a youth contract - however I happen to know he will accept the same deal on a part-time contract.

So can anyone please tell me what the difference is? - (apart from a Youth player training with the youth coaches, of course)

In previous FMs I had believed a youth contact to be a specific type of Part-time contract - ie the training was the same hours/workload as a Part-time player, just in a the youth team.

With FM11.3 however I've noticed that the workloads are very different for the same settings between Youth and Part-time training schedules.

Which offers the most training time? Will a Youth player receive more training than a Part-timer?

That has been the case for a long time I think. Youths train more than part-timers.

Aside from the contract though there are much more important things to consider about development.

By far the main one is first team football, he needs to play competitive games while also making sure the coach workload is light. Further down the list is the quality of both the coaches & training facilities and contracts.

TBH if you are a part-time club I really wouldn't pin your hopes on players improving much and I would concentrate much on on getting in more fully developed players.

Thanks for the advice, Cougar - I'm not expecting to develop superstars.

That I will sign this player (and a few others like this that my scouts have found) is undoubtable.

£25/week is a wage I can afford and these players are almost good enough to be back up players (for this season in the bottom league, at least).

My scouts have reported these players have the potential to become good players at the next level or two, though frankly I'd be satisfied if they progressed well enough to be adequate back-up players at those levels.

There is little risk too, if I don't get promoted they will be better at this level, and if I do get promoted and they aren't good enough they aren't too expensive to offload or keep in the reserves. (Here is one advantage of youth contracts, I suppose - their wages next season will be subsidised iirc, but that's not really a great concern to me: their combined weekly pay is less than half-of-one of the players I've just given away on free transfers).

I know from experience they are likely to accept the same wage on a part-time contract, hence my question about which type of contract would favour their deveolpment more: youth or part-time?

Does anyone know what the difference in the training is in terms of duration, effectiveness and ultimately development?

It is perhaps worth mentioning that I have a first-team coach that wouldn't coach them if I gave them youth contracts - however he has a fairly poor working with youngsters stat anyway, so the slightly lower quality of coaching (by the stars rating) in his training category may be just as effective due to the youth coaches better working with youngsters.

As someone has said they do roughly the same amount of training anyway. However a youth contract player is more likely to improve his stats better as he doesn't have any match preparation training to do whereas a part-time player does do match prep training.

However if they are on a youth contract other clubs can then poach your player with you not being able to do anything if they progress well.