When and How Do You Determine if one of your 'Hot Prospects' is a flop?

Title says it all. Can some people with experience chime in on this and help me understand the key turning points in developing so-called promising youth prospects (something I have never really got a handle on)? At what point do you give-up on someone as a flop? For example, if they are 22 or 23 and still dont really look the part, should I stick with it or have they missed the boat by then?

I'd say 22 or 23 is a bit old before deciding. Ideally if they were what I was looking for from initially being a promising youth by that age I'd expect them to have 3-4 seasons under their belt, so I'd know anyway. But then I like using young squads so there will be many out there who'd not play the game quite like I do and probably disagree with me.

If I was really unsure, I'd want to give them a run of 2-3 months of regular 1st team football then decide. That will give you the chance to give them a chance and nothing stretches out the CA like regular 1st team football.

Alot of people would probably say 21/22 is the cut off point for getting rid. That's how I see it anyway. If I have a good prospect, I'd probably look to loan him out from 17 to 19 for first team football. Hopefully this will help him improve and when he returns, he'd be ready to be a back up/rotation player for my first team, or go straight into being first choice. At 22/23, it's where I would probably look to see how important that player is. If he's versatile but doesn't play many games, but is still decent, I'd keep him on if the wages were right. If he's not and I can't see him being back-up for much longer, then I'd look to sell him on with a sell on fee, so that if he did do well and got a big move, you'd get some sort of reward for his small development at your club.

On the forums, the most notable person who looks to buy and sell for profit all the time, is probably Heath. He'll buy lots of youngsters for the sake of it, even if they won't ever get into his first team because he knows that after two or three seasons he could probably make some money from them.

I evaluate their development at the ages of 19 and 21.

However, I need to re-evaluate my evaluation of center backs, as I often let go really top quality defenders.

Not sure about 12 but in the previous titles I found it surprisingly easy to develop youngsters – or perhaps more importantly, develop them quickly. I would just stick them in the team and let them play often (-ish). I suppose somewhere between 19-21 if they had not improved noticeably they would get sold. Honestly, I don't remember ever letting go a single one that would go and surprise everyone by becoming class in his, say, early twenties. Don't expect much has changed in this year's version so I fully expect to use the above approach. And for it to work just as well.

23 at the earliest, unless they're clearly not going to fit somewhere, even as a reserve.

19 to deem whether they deserves a place in my 1st team(& available in reserves)

And will let the other stay in reserves(or loan) till 21 before deciding selling them..

20/21 usually.

21 for mids and forwards

22, maybe 23 for defenders.