Scouting Knowledge - fm10

I'm still on FM10, so forgive me if this is improved now...

I have 15 or so scouts covering around three countries each and of course, where possible, I match them up to where their knowledge lies. But this doesn't always work, so some have to scout countries they have no knowledge of.

Is it right then that someone can scout, for example, Portugal twice a year every year - but as soon as they go on another trip, they slowly lose all the knowledge so by the time they start again, they are starting from scratch. Surely some of it would stick? It is more annoying as they have knowledge of Serbia, where I have never sent them and where they haven't been employed for a number of years - but this never changes.

Seems odd that the knowledge of Portugal drops despite much scouting, but Serbia never does - when in reality they will have no idea of how the game has moved on in the 10 years since they may have been there. Shouldn't this be a bit more dynamic?

I completly agree and it's something that i've been wanting for a long time, scouts never lose their natural knowledge even if they have been away from that country for years, yet they quickly lose knowledge of a country they aren't natural from.

The best way IMO it's just take advantage of their natural knowledge to the most, for instance norwegian scouts have a very good natural knowledge of most scandinavian countries, dutch scouts have a very good knowledge of Netherlands and Belgium so i send them to those two countries, a German scout to Germany and Switzerland and so on..

Have you ever noticed if a scout retains this new knowledge if he learns to speak the language? Adaptability might have something to do with it. (guessing here)

Completely agree, and its not just limited to scouts, but your own profile as well. Having managed in Germany for 8 years up until 3 years ago, I doubt very much that I'd have completely forgotten everything about the country and its' players (knowledge is now at 0). Though oddly, I stopped managing Russia 6 years ago and still have 74% knowledge there.

Sometimes it's odd but it's most likely linked to the large youth intake on the related date. As more newgens enter the clubs then your overall knowledge diminishes due to a lack of information on these new players.

You might loose scouting knowledge if the league is loaded and playable as they introduce more youth than an unloaded league.

As Coentrao stated, keep the scouts in the region of their origin and you should have more success. If you are able to have 15+ scouts then maybe have 1 nation specific scouts as well. Eg. Spain Scout, scouting nation: Spain and League: Liga BBVA.

There could be a chance the knowledge is linked to a formula that diminishes when they leave a nation they just scouted because a players form fluctuates. For instance, IRL a scout may not be 100% confident of some players he scouted 4 months ago because anything could have happened. Having said that I'm sure scouts are mainly influenced by rep, CA, and PA in FM.

As Kain mentioned, the knowledge for our manager profiles are sum what strange. I've had knowledge from countries I've never managed in. I read a while ago that your knowledge can be influenced by people who like you. So it's like your multiple Russian friends keep you in the loop, whereas you didn't make as many connections in Germany. Maybe try a test and Search: Staff: Favoured Personnel: Your name, just to see who likes you.

As I understand it, the scouts knowledge doesn't matter. What matters is the clubs knowledge of the country. So if your club has full knowledge of Japan due to your club is parent club to a Japanese club (or you have a scout/coach or whatever from Japan), then no matter which scout you sent to scout Japan that scout will have full knowledge. What kind of players the scout will find and how he'll rate them are up the attributes of the scout, though.

Have you actually tested that Sikker? From my observations even by having knowledge from feeder clubs or coaches the scout will take a long time completing the assignment if he doesn't have any knowledge of that country.

I once sent a scout to Brazil. The scout had full knowledge and it took 5 month for him to finish. I've also tried to sent a scout to some African nation that the scout had no knowledge of (and I don't think the club had much knowledge either). The scouting was finished within a week. No South American and no African nations were loaded.

So regarding scout completion time I don't know how it works. Probably something to with the amount of players in the scouted nation.

Yeah that's what i'm wondering because i know that if a scout is going to a country with no knowledge whatsoever takes a very long time to complete the assignment (and it's one of the reasons why i think that scouting regions is somewhat of a waste of time), once he has knowledge of that country he completes it faster.

But i never noticed if they use the actual knowledge of the club, i thought that only affected the player search.

Well, I haven't seen anything that should imply that less scouting knowledge means longer scouting time.

http://www.footballmanager.com/manual/166 This video mentions the clubs scouting network. Something I believe to have an influence on your scouts knowledge (though it's not graphically shown).

http://www.footballmanager.com/manual/167 This, however, implies that it's best to send a scout to scout nations where he has full knowledge. Here the clubs scouting knowledge is not mentioned, though. So what a clubs scouting network influences aren't perfectly described... Just another guess work...

All my scouts have a good adaptability, so that doesn't seem to help.

I know what people mean re. manager knowledge too. I managed Brazil (and Histon) and after winning the world cup, resigned. My knowledge of Brazil was about three quarters full. The Holland job came up, so I took it, but resigned after a few days as I couldn't be bothered. I checked back at my profile and my Brazil knowledge had gone completely, replaced now by Holland - about three quarters full. So to my eye, it simply replaced one with the other - I'm a quick learner, but even I would struggle gaining that much knowledge of a country in three days!

I take on board the feeder club idea - I take advantage of this where I can, but it takes ages to build them up and are quickly severed with no warning on a whim. A recent takeover at Histon lost me three feeders. That will take about a year or so to replace - providing my suggestions are accepted. That aside, the scouts should (and I think do) bring their own knowledge to the table - and it should increase and to a certain degree remain after constant scouting. I'm hiring scouts, not goldfish!

Where I can, I do match their knowledge to the countries I want scouted. But I have a number of leagues loaded and it is impossible to get the variety required to cover all the bases.

If FM11 isn't any better, it would be good to get this improved on I think.