Forcing reserve team managers to play fringe players. Please add it SI.

There is one thing that has been annoying me for the last few editions of FM, and that is that my coaches never pick certain players when they manage the reserves.

I have a young striker at my club that I don't think is too bad, but could certainly improve with game time. I'm not likley to be picking him for first team duties but he gets the odd place on the bench and should, in my view, be a dead cert for starting in the second team. There is no league for my second team (I'm in the Norwegian Second), but I set up regular friendlies against local teams to keep the match fitness up.

I only have a small squad, and that forces the game to create a number of grey players to fill my ranks. With that in mind I thought it would be a certainty that this young striker gets a run out in these reserve friendlies. Instead my Assistant Manager keeps picking an awful young grey striker to partner another upcoming young player.

Now this player is rated as not good enough for the club by most of my coaches, but he's really not got the worst stats. They're much better than the grey player that gets games, so why is this fringe player not getting a game? I don't understand this. Surely contracted players should be given emphasis over greys.

I've looked and looked but I can't find an option to force my coach to pick this player, other than to manage the reserves myself. I guess it would be a better option but I play games on full match already and adding in reserve games would add even more time to my games.

Can I urge SI to give us some option to force coaches to pick certain players. This really should be a necessity in Football Manager. At least give us the ability to pick a team for the reserves and tell the coach to play those players.

If I have missed an option to force this please someone tell me.

When you make the selection and than go on holiday for a day before you submit the squad, does he still not play the young striker? By selecting "use current squad selection when possible"?

That only works for the senior team, you can mark a player as available for reserve/youth team but unless you are managing that team you have no control over who the selected team manager selects.

Certainly an area that has bugged me, if I select a senior squad member for an outing in the reserves he should be given preference, I should also have the option to say what position he should play & whether I only want him to play one half of the match.

It works for me - to some extend. I'm in control of my reserve team, because the AM did select 90% youth players instead of reserve or first team players with lacking match practise, when he was in charge. Now I make the selection and go on holiday for a day. He still uses youth players, but instead of 10 it's down to 4 or 5, which is not perfect, but a lot better than before.

I posted a suggestion years ago, that there should be individual instructions for all players, like available for reserve for 45/30/15 minutes, force to play in the next reserve game etc.

I would like to see a simple drag box where you can move reserve team players that you would like whoever runs the team to prioritize the playing time of. Doesn't seem like it would be very hard to implement.

I thought I'd post an update on this. There was a little fact that I realised just the other day and it is to do with making players available for the reserve team. It might be that players, even if they are placed in the reserves, are not available to play unless you have ticked the 'make available for reserves' option. I ticked this on the player I was referring to in my OP and he started playing.

There were other factors involved, such as other players not being made available, but it did seem to be forcing the coach to select him. I'm going to keep going with it and see how it works.

For now it is really the only option anyway.