It is way too easy to pick up the top prospects in the game year after year

Over the years, I have found it way too easy to the best youngster from various clubs youth teams at the start of each season. Because its so easy, a lot of people end with squads that are bloated beyond control.

The way things are, it is just way too easy to sign the best youngsters as soon as they are promoted into another clubs youth team.

Here are some of the players that I have picked up over the years:

Cost 3 million (compensation). Signed from Fiorentina.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/4244/oliverix.png

Cost 3 million (compensation). Signed from Arsenal.

http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/1491/steffan.png

Cost 4.5 million. Signed from Trabzonspor

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/8854/furkanp.png

Cost 3 million (compensation). Signed from Inter Milan

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/427/lombardi.png

Cost 3 million (compensation). Signed from Bordeaux

http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/9404/cesar.png

Cost 1 million. Signed from RoPS in Finland.

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/8087/santeri.png

Cost 3 million (compensation). Signed from Barcelona.

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8139/vega.png

Cost absolutely nothing. He was released by the LA Galaxy.

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/3521/zamorak.png

These are all players I developed and as you can see they are all players who had immense potential. I don't think it should have been that easy for me to sign them.

What I want to see in future FM games is basically this:

-Youngsters should be more reluctant to leave their initial clubs

-AI controlled clubs should be more aggressive when it comes to searching for and signing youngsters around the world.

-AI controlled clubs should be more aggressive when it comes to keeping their top youngsters.

Otherwise I will continue to take the best youngsters in the game year after year for cheap and without much effort.

P.S. I have a quick question. What do you think I should do with Vega? He looks brilliant but his lack of passing and technique worries me a little.....

I agree with this. Makes the Homegrown situation for continental cups a joke when you get a few seasons in

Is this fm11?

That guy on loan at hibernian must be having a great time

Is this fm11?

That guy on loan at hibernian must be having a great time

I'm still playing FM10. I doubt the situation with youngsters is too different in the current edition of the game so I think my feelings still apply.

Oh and Cesar is a very gifted youngster. He played a couple of games with the first team after I signed him. He scored or assisted in basically every game he played in.

I'm still playing FM10. I doubt the situation with youngsters is too different in the current edition of the game so I think my feelings still apply.

It's still pretty much the same IMO.

Yeh this is why the game gets easy after about 4-5 years imo. The AI ends up with an aging squad and a small squad whilst your squad basically is the 25 best players in the world bar a few aging veterns like messi

I'm still playing FM10. I doubt the situation with youngsters is too different in the current edition of the game so I think my feelings still apply.

Oh and Cesar is a very gifted youngster. He played a couple of games with the first team after I signed him. He scored or assisted in basically every game he played in.

So you havent played a new version for two years and you complain and automatically think its still the same? Thats hilarious. In actual fact it pretty much is the same. Theres alot who wouldnt go straight away unless youre a big team thats not a rival. But other than that you only have to wait half a season to a year to get them more interested. But thats not the point, you shouldnt assume without playing it.

And btw, why on earth are you still playing 10? It was good at the time, i had a great file on there, but 11 was better, and 12 is even better and more complete. Infact if you even went on 11 you wouldnt go back to 10, for the things they added in that game alone. But 12 is on yet another level again. The only times i personally stayed on and went back to a version, was 00/01 and 2008 (and 00/01 was original champ man)

So you havent played a new version for two years and you complain and automatically think its still the same? Thats hilarious. In actual fact it pretty much is the same. Theres alot who wouldnt go straight away unless youre a big team thats not a rival. But other than that you only have to wait half a season to a year to get them more interested. But thats not the point, you shouldnt assume without playing it.

And btw, why on earth are you still playing 10? It was good at the time, i had a great file on there, but 11 was better, and 12 is even better and more complete. Infact if you even went on 11 you wouldnt go back to 10, for the things they added in that game alone. But 12 is on yet another level again. The only times i personally stayed on and went back to a version, was 00/01 and 2008 (and 00/01 was original champ man)

If there are things that can be improved in the game then I have the right to say something about them don't I? Fair enough. I haven't played the full version.

Let me ask you about your experience with the game then. How good is the AI at keep its top prospects in your save(s)? Are the top clubs in your game actively trying to go after the top prospects in the world? How easy has it been to sign youngsters from other clubs in your experience?

I can't be completely wrong if the few others, in this thread, have basically agreed with the point that I am trying to make. That point is the AI is too simple when it comes to handling the next generation of footballers in the game. These players are created and are easy to snap up. It wouldn't be far fetched to say that, if I went out and bought FM12, I could probably end up with a youth that all have at least 3 stars potential within a season or 2. Or do you disagree with that statement?

As for why I am still playing FM10, I have 2 reasons.

Firstly, I tried the FM12 demo and, as good as it was, there were certain aspects of it that annoyed me and basically ruined whatever fun I had with it. Because of that I decided against getting the full game.

Secondly, I have gotten to the point in my life where I don't have the time to play FM hours on end. When I bought FM10, I decided that I was going to make a long term save because I had never made one before. Do you wanna know how many seasons I got through before FM11 came out? 3. And I am busier now than I was then. In fact I got through more seasons in FM10 after FM11 came out and you know what? I had a blast with it and I am still have a blast with my long term save. My favorite part of this game is developing youngsters. I can do that if I get through at most 4 or 5 seasons before I buy the next edition of the game.

Truth be told, I might only buy FM every 3 or so years. But who knows, that may change in the future. For now I will continue to develop top prospects whether they make into my first team or another one in england or somewhere else in europe.

At the end of the day, I want the AI to be improved because that will prolong the fun that we will have in future versions of the game.

So you havent played a new version for two years and you complain and automatically think its still the same? Thats hilarious. In actual fact it pretty much is the same. Theres alot who wouldnt go straight away unless youre a big team thats not a rival. But other than that you only have to wait half a season to a year to get them more interested. But thats not the point, you shouldnt assume without playing it.

And btw, why on earth are you still playing 10? It was good at the time, i had a great file on there, but 11 was better, and 12 is even better and more complete. Infact if you even went on 11 you wouldnt go back to 10, for the things they added in that game alone. But 12 is on yet another level again. The only times i personally stayed on and went back to a version, was 00/01 and 2008 (and 00/01 was original champ man)

IMO the biggest most glaring issues with this game has been around for several years. SI doesn't seem to really care, but spends time on the 3D renderings instead... Makes sense.

So you havent played a new version for two years and you complain and automatically think its still the same? Thats hilarious. In actual fact it pretty much is the same. Theres alot who wouldnt go straight away unless youre a big team thats not a rival. But other than that you only have to wait half a season to a year to get them more interested. But thats not the point, you shouldnt assume without playing it.

And btw, why on earth are you still playing 10? It was good at the time, i had a great file on there, but 11 was better, and 12 is even better and more complete. Infact if you even went on 11 you wouldnt go back to 10, for the things they added in that game alone. But 12 is on yet another level again. The only times i personally stayed on and went back to a version, was 00/01 and 2008 (and 00/01 was original champ man)

since no improvements have been made in this area for the last 3 years. then it is irrelevant if he is playing 10,11,or 12.

i completely agree that it is way too easy to FIND, and BUY the best 15,16 year olds in the game.

For me the main problem is that a human coach has too much information about how good a player is. Espacially if you regard youth players, there should be no market values to help the player finding the best youth. The should be a much bigger risk, that young players just stop developing even if they are seen as a good prospect. For me the best solution is, that you strip the player of his information. Scouting should be much more difficult. It should need time to really have a good look on how good a youth can be. It is ridicoulus that you just have to click a scout report button and one day later, you know so much about the player. And it would be a change which is easy to do. Sure, a bette AI would be nice, but we all know that this is not easy to do.

But it would'nt be that much work to develope a system, where it es really difficult to spot the best youth players. And it would be much more fun if such a system is introduced. A Club which developes the player by themnselve should have a much better view of the players in comparision with a club which is just scouting them.

So get rid of the market value (or just calculate it on nothing else than performance and Age) and make it harder to spot the youth and you have a great advancement in Difficulty and Realismn.

A top Team should not sell good youth players at all. ManU and Barca will never sell a player if they think, he can achieve Greatness. So it would be great if good youth coaches can spot the ability much better than bad ones. it should be really important how good the youth coach can judge potential. And Team, which doesn't need money should stay with their top prospects on every decent price. But more important is a better scouting system. Without that every change to AI will either frustating for players (you cannot sign any good youth) or to easy (the player can still sign every top youth). As further addition I would like a limit for youth players, which is set by the board. A player should not be able to fill his Squad with 40+ youths, when he is not in a Top Team. That would add some challenge too, because a player must decide, which player is really important and get rid of bad ones.

Just dont buy them ALL then? Therefore, an equal spread.

Just dont buy them ALL then? Therefore, an equal spread.

Why shouldn't we target them when we see them? What would be the point of scouts then? We are supposed to want to find and sign the world's best youngsters whenever and where ever they pop up. Problem is the AI doesn't always seem to have the wherewithal to tie down their best youth players before we can do that. And how many times have you had to compete with another club when trying to sign top rated 16 year old?

How about this guy who signed for Barca for £5 mil from Man U...

SORT IT OUT SI!

Just dont buy them ALL then? Therefore, an equal spread.

I am not searching the youth teams systemeticly and I am buying only the player my scouts find or who are transfer listet. But the need of self-restriction by the Gamer shows, that there is a huge mistake in Gameplay Mechanics. You can never terminate all exploits in a complex game like this. But if you are bringing out a new Game year after year, there should be a new Challenge in every version. And signing good youths is not any harder since I started with FM in 07. And this is a major area of the game and there are solutions for this, without tweaking the AI too much (this would of course be the best).

I really enjoy the game, but I dislike the tendency by teh Community to answer every kind of criticism with the hint that the player should not do there best to win. This doesn't help the game to get better as it is now. And the whole signing this is really vital for the whole game mechanic.

How about this guy who signed for Barca for £5 mil from Man U...

SORT IT OUT SI!

He wasn't getting the first team football he wanted, was unlikely to move ahead of Ferdinand or Vidic & was keen on the idea of returning to Spain.

He looked good in the games I saw him in. I thought Man U were crazy letting him go. He clearly had talent, but not enough of a crack at the first team. Yes, he liked the idea of returning to Spain and having a chance to get more first team football, but that is just like the situation here. There's no reason to say that there's anything wrong with young talented players moving for £2-5 mil about the place like Pique and many others did and that was the point here.

someone's been using the player editor

i find you very rarely see world class players with so many 19's and 20's, never mind youth prospects. you never see youth players with such impressive mental attributes when i play.

How about this guy who signed for Barca for £5 mil from Man U...

SORT IT OUT SI!

Funny man

Thats one player though. I doubt you see many teams that have youth teams where every single player has the potential to be a star for that team. While for us it is very possible to achieve with out too much trouble.

Its not exactly surprising you can sign the best young talent whilst being Man Utd?

[/font]Did anyone in the UK really think he was any good while at Man U or would have been able to make the grade in the Premier League?

He wasn't getting the first team football he wanted, was unlikely to move ahead of Ferdinand or Vidic & was keen on the idea of returning to Spain.

Was it not a case that Ferguson didnt believe Vidic would come in and have the impact he did, and he had promised Pique that if he didnt get first team football he would let him go, i'm sure i read something similar in an interview a few years ago, ill see if i can find it online anywhere.

For me the main problem is that a human coach has too much information about how good a player is. Espacially if you regard youth players, there should be no market values to help the player finding the best youth. The should be a much bigger risk, that young players just stop developing even if they are seen as a good prospect. For me the best solution is, that you strip the player of his information. Scouting should be much more difficult. It should need time to really have a good look on how good a youth can be. It is ridicoulus that you just have to click a scout report button and one day later, you know so much about the player. And it would be a change which is easy to do. Sure, a bette AI would be nice, but we all know that this is not easy to do.

But it would'nt be that much work to develope a system, where it es really difficult to spot the best youth players. And it would be much more fun if such a system is introduced. A Club which developes the player by themnselve should have a much better view of the players in comparision with a club which is just scouting them.

So get rid of the market value (or just calculate it on nothing else than performance and Age) and make it harder to spot the youth and you have a great advancement in Difficulty and Realismn.

A top Team should not sell good youth players at all. ManU and Barca will never sell a player if they think, he can achieve Greatness. So it would be great if good youth coaches can spot the ability much better than bad ones. it should be really important how good the youth coach can judge potential. And Team, which doesn't need money should stay with their top prospects on every decent price. But more important is a better scouting system. Without that every change to AI will either frustating for players (you cannot sign any good youth) or to easy (the player can still sign every top youth). As further addition I would like a limit for youth players, which is set by the board. A player should not be able to fill his Squad with 40+ youths, when he is not in a Top Team. That would add some challenge too, because a player must decide, which player is really important and get rid of bad ones.

every person that has something to do with SI should read this. the best thing to do is to have new youth players start with a value of 0, then go up depending on their performances.

Just dont buy them ALL then? Therefore, an equal spread.

Not true. Even if you don't buy them, doesn't mean the AI will.

A few years into any save there are tons and tons of fantastic talents out of contracts. The AI is extremely stupid when it comes to renewing contracts with future stars.

The AI would be working properly if

A - the AI were right when they evaluated the players and decided that they were not good enough for the team

and

B - Lesser teams then proceeded to snatch them up for free (if Man Utd doesn't want them, maybe Leciester does?)

In the current version of the game (and many versions before this one) this is NOT the case. The AI releases future stars, which then retire at the age of 20 because noone wanted them.

Well, I want them, so I currently have 10+ players in my first team that I've signed for free since they were out of contracts at their former clubs (big clubs in big leagues). I offer them contracts as backup players with low wages and then I slowly introduce them into my first team. At the moment one of them is touted as the new Jürgen Klinsmann, one as the new Emre, etc. They are BIG talents that the AI simply didn't want. I have 10-20 more of those sitting in my reserves or on loan in other clubs to replace anyone I might sell off.

Its not exactly surprising you can sign the best young talent whilst being Man Utd?

I know that me being man united means that I will have an easier chance of signing youngsters. Thing is while I am out signing these youngsters, Chelsea, Arsenal, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Real Madrid, and Barcelona are sitting around doing nothing. They are not going around trying to buy these youngsters. I face little to no competition whatsoever when I try to sign a youth player.

And I am pretty sure that a lot of people get to the point in a save where they are a dominant force in world football and I am sure that they rarely face competition from other big clubs when they are trying to sign youngsters.

Shoot I have even gotten youngsters from some of these clubs for cheap.

Look at Steffan Evans and Juan Jose Vega. Do you think in reality such players would have left Arsenal and Barcelona so easily respectively?

This is another problem/bad design of the game that SI has left unfixed for years.

I'm surprised people are still being surprised by things like these.

Its not that I'm not surprised by this. I just figured it wouldn't do any harm to raise the issue in regards to youngsters in the game.

I have been able to easily sign brand new regens from clubs in various places. German clubs (Bundesliga ones, too), happily let two 15 year olds go, whilst Ajax let me take a regen keeper who may become best in the world one day.

Not realistic, IMHO. How would City even KNOW about these guys IRL?

IMO i agree that youths potential should be evaluated by perfomances,right now the youth candidates vs u19s match is useless,my scouts already told me who sucks and who has the most potential so why should i even bother with the rest,it's not like their gonna pull off a surprise and become world class...

For me the main problem is that a human coach has too much information about how good a player is. Espacially if you regard youth players, there should be no market values to help the player finding the best youth. The should be a much bigger risk, that young players just stop developing even if they are seen as a good prospect. For me the best solution is, that you strip the player of his information. Scouting should be much more difficult. It should need time to really have a good look on how good a youth can be. It is ridicoulus that you just have to click a scout report button and one day later, you know so much about the player. And it would be a change which is easy to do. Sure, a bette AI would be nice, but we all know that this is not easy to do.

But it would'nt be that much work to develope a system, where it es really difficult to spot the best youth players. And it would be much more fun if such a system is introduced. A Club which developes the player by themnselve should have a much better view of the players in comparision with a club which is just scouting them.

So get rid of the market value (or just calculate it on nothing else than performance and Age) and make it harder to spot the youth and you have a great advancement in Difficulty and Realismn.

A top Team should not sell good youth players at all. ManU and Barca will never sell a player if they think, he can achieve Greatness. So it would be great if good youth coaches can spot the ability much better than bad ones. it should be really important how good the youth coach can judge potential. And Team, which doesn't need money should stay with their top prospects on every decent price. But more important is a better scouting system. Without that every change to AI will either frustating for players (you cannot sign any good youth) or to easy (the player can still sign every top youth). As further addition I would like a limit for youth players, which is set by the board. A player should not be able to fill his Squad with 40+ youths, when he is not in a Top Team. That would add some challenge too, because a player must decide, which player is really important and get rid of bad ones.

I agree with this post. The scouting process in FM is quite ridiculous. You ask your scout for a report on a 15 year old player from some obscure club in a small nation and voila, within a day you have a report that tells you everything about the player's current ability, personality and gives a pretty accurate estimation on his potential as well. How would the scout obtain that information without even wathing the player in a match?

What needs to be introduced is much heavier attribute masking. Asking your scout for 'report only' should only reveal player personal details, statistics and perhaps some estimation on their availability - information that is actually obtainable without seeing the player in person. If you want to see any attributes the scout would have to start watching the player in matches. Each match should only reveal a few attributes, depending on the scout's ability of course (a way to actually make their attributes mean something in the game). Better scouts should be able to spot better players to recommend to you but you would still need get match reports to see attributes. Each scout should also have a limit on how many players can be scouted at once.

Sorry for my bad english

It would be great to have as an option a heavier attribute masking. For example, instead of having an exact attribute, having a range like an estimation of that att.

F.E, we could have a player which the scout estimate:

Dribbling: 11-15

Finishing: 13-16

And so on. The better the scout, better the estimation. And obviously the precision should be correlated with several things like how much games did the scout watch of this player, the knowledge of the country, the CA attribute of the scout, etc etc.

I think it should be an option, not a bounded feature

Can I ask how you find these players?

I scout the world extensively because I hate not knowing about any talented youngster.

That's fair enough but for the people that search for these youngsters using the search functions shouldn't complain.

The only reason they are finding these before the AI is because they have that search tool available to them.

If a manager has 20 in Working With Youngsters and has 170+ ability, he should not fail to develop the talented youngsters at his club. It is as simple as that. This means that good AI managers that are good with youngsters should master the following, using the mechanics within the game:

* Youth training. He should have better training schedules for youngsters than the default ones. Even ideal schedules for each player, according to the actual implementation of the training module in the game.

* Tutoring. He should succeed at having a senior player with high Determination, professionality and ambition (+ pressure and big matches) teach a promising youngster his stuff. He should not ever choose a tutor who would make the youngster worse, which the coaches often do.

* Squad rotation focused on youngsters. When the team is in form and is favourites for a game, he should be able to correctly determine which youngster(s) to start and how many at the same time (he should field a stronger side, having higher total CA than the best total CA of the opposition - if he can't he shouldn't let youngsters play for the sake of match experience).

* Team talks for youngsters. Putting sufficiently low pressure on the youngsters depending on their maturity is essential. This doesn't happen now.

* Squad management for youth and reserve teams. Succeed at convincing promising youngsters to go on loan to a proper club in order to gain first team experience. Releasing players who won't become good enough or worth a sufficient amount of money. Selling Decent youngsters and keeping Hot Prospects - and of course hot prospects should be 3+ star potential kids, no less.

* Signing hot prospects. They should be able to build a good youth team just like we do. The goal is to have 3+ star PA youngsters in every position of the tactic plus backup.

This should be how things are done regarding all the Manager attributes.

What?

Every manager, no matter how good, should be able to fail when developing a player.

Look at Ferguson and Forlan for a very, very high-profile example.

Why would they go to the bother of programming the AI to re-make training schedules when the current ones work fine? I never change them for young players and never struggle to make superstars. Some of your ideas are ok Biggus but they are far far too rigid. Even the very best managers fail sometimes.

Why would they go to the bother of programming the AI to re-make training schedules when the current ones work fine? I never change them for young players and never struggle to make superstars. Some of your ideas are ok Biggus but they are far far too rigid. Even the very best managers fail sometimes.

Why should they fail? This is a game. Even if they didn't fail the human managers would always find a way to become better than them, and therein lies the challenge. It is impossible to program failsafes in such a complex game as this, so SI should endevour to make sure the AI uses the available tools correctly rather than purposedly nerfing them in a feeble attempt at "realism". The fact is that if you set a manager to 200 CA and PA and 20 everything, he will still be awful. How is that realistic?

Until SI programs a maxed out manager to do everything right, how can they make -any- AI manager realistic?

He will be awful compared to a human, of course he will, no amount of programming is going to make them on an even keel with us, not for a long time yet. But if you remove the ability for the AI to make mistakes then you would have to remove every single possible mistake, which then means the game is not following any kind of realistic process and the whole simulation thing goes out the window. Not every human manager will get everything 100% correct 100% of the time, why should the AI have that ability?

He will be awful compared to a human, of course he will, no amount of programming is going to make them on an even keel with us, not for a long time yet. But if you remove the ability for the AI to make mistakes then you would have to remove every single possible mistake, which then means the game is not following any kind of realistic process and the whole simulation thing goes out the window. Not every human manager will get everything 100% correct 100% of the time, why should the AI have that ability?

I didn't mean doing everything right in football, but everything right in the game. The practical issue here is that it is totally random whether or not any manager (regardless of CA) manages to build a good squad, set up a good tactic and motivate their players + keeping morale high. This is because the AI isn't programmed to do so, and yes there IS a correct way of doing so... in the game (in reality there are many correct ways). I'm simply saying that the AI should also know what that correct way is.

Its not random at all, i have first hand experience of improving managers in order to make the AI squad building better, better quality managers are better at buying players and at building squads, AI managers with good skills for handling youngsters are better at nurturing them, the list goes on, yes they need a lot of work to improve them, but its not random how they perform.

I dont see why giving the AI advantages over us would be a good way to go, everyone makes mistakes, human managers included, i make mistakes in every save i play, be it releasing a player who goes on to prove you wrong, to choosing an inappropriate team talk or signing the wrong players, why make it so the AI cannot make these mistakes? Then we risk going down the route of difficulty levels introduced purely by AI advantages.

Its not random at all, i have first hand experience of improving managers in order to make the AI squad building better, better quality managers are better at buying players and at building squads, AI managers with good skills for handling youngsters are better at nurturing them, the list goes on, yes they need a lot of work to improve them, but its not random how they perform.

I dont see why giving the AI advantages over us would be a good way to go, everyone makes mistakes, human managers included, i make mistakes in every save i play, be it releasing a player who goes on to prove you wrong, to choosing an inappropriate team talk or signing the wrong players, why make it so the AI cannot make these mistakes? Then we risk going down the route of difficulty levels introduced purely by AI advantages.

Choosing the correct signing (from a number of options) doesn't mean that this player will make the team better. He may have difficulties adjust, gel with his teammates. Things may happen (injuries etc) that makes him a flop. The fans may not like him. A number of things could happen...

In practice, what I mean here is that if the tactic employs one ball-winning defensive midfielder and one attacking, playmaker midfielder in two M C positions, and the squad consists of two 4-star playmakers and two 3-star ball-winners, the manager - regardless of CA - will use both playmakers. He will continue to sign playmakers (or random high-CA central midfielders really), and he will continue to tell For the Fans to players who become nervous because of this every match.

Even if he correctly used one ball-winner and one playmaker this doesn't mean that he would win every match, and even if he correctly built a deep and balanced squad this doesn't mean he would achieve world domination because all the other good managers would succeed at this also. And even if he correctly adjusted team talks to team morale, opposition quality (not reputation/match odds) and player mentalities so that he didn't fail at team talks, that would only last for the exact same 10 minutes that our team talks last.

You know me and my hyperbole, you should have been able to see past that by now

hahahaha you do love to dramatise a situation in FM

Look, please dont get me wrong, things have to improve, 100% defintely, but i would hate to see them give the AI any advantages that the human player doesnt have, taking away AI mistakes kinda negates the purpose of the game, i think anyway.

hahahaha you do love to dramatise a situation in FM

Look, please dont get me wrong, things have to improve, 100% defintely, but i would hate to see them give the AI any advantages that the human player doesnt have, taking away AI mistakes kinda negates the purpose of the game, i think anyway.

I believe that taking away mistakes - or to put it better; allowing the AI to do correct choices - when a given manager attribute is maxed out will allow SI to implement a more realistic range of success rate into the manager quality hierarchy. Let's say that attribute 20 = 90% success rate on average, 10 = 50% and 1= 10%.

Giving SAF 20 in Motivating, Working with youngsters, Discipline and Determination will then make sure that his squad is willing to die for him, but his Man Management, Judging Player Potential, Controversy, Temper , Tactical Knowledge and other weaker attributes makes him beatable because a motivated, disciplined squad is not everything that matters.

It takes a dedicated human manager a few weeks RL-time to master the "motivation & morale engine", and then he is better than SAF at it. How is that realistic?

I agree with Biggus here I think. An attribute of 20 should mean that the manager is near perfect at that specific aspect. The random number generator will always be there to ensure seemingly correct choices do not guarantee 100% success but a manager rated 20/20 at motivation should generally pick the best (or at least never the worst) option for a team talk, for example. Sadly, this discussion is all moot at this point since the mechanics to make AI staff behave individually don't exist. It's all so depressingly obvious when your assistant keeps suggesting the 'for the fans' team talk for every single game and every member of your backroom staff agrees with him - as would any other ass man you could replace him with. The mechanics that would ensure that the AI could see past match odds/reputation/CA/PA simply aren't there.

someone's been using the player editor

i find you very rarely see world class players with so many 19's and 20's, never mind youth prospects. you never see youth players with such impressive mental attributes when i play.

I did not read the whole thread but its more than player edito cuz just look at Fernando Zamora he has a 19 creativity but the chart is way away from the creativity line..

I did not read the whole thread but its more than player edito cuz just look at Fernando Zamora he has a 19 creativity but the chart is way away from the creativity line..

the creativity field includes flair and creativity; his low flair means the graph doesn't reach near the max

Regarding youth signings, i think your past actions in the game should have a big bearing on your ability to sign top prospects, do you have a reputation for giving young players a chance, or do you stick with establish pro's. There are some clubs who aren't known for bringing through youngsters, and some who are, I would hope that this could be implemented, even if the club the player signs with is much less prestigious than some other offers, seeing it more as a stepping stone to the future .

* Squad rotation focused on youngsters. When the team is in form and is favourites for a game, he should be able to correctly determine which youngster(s) to start and how many at the same time (he should field a stronger side, having higher total CA than the best total CA of the opposition - if he can't he shouldn't let youngsters play for the sake of match experience).

At the very least, the AI's willingness to utilize and develop youth needs to meet the Jack Wilshere threshold. For two versions of the game now, most saves see one of the brightest talents in world football rot in the reserves and go wholly undeveloped while the AI loads up the Arsenal midfield with relatively mediocre 28 year-olds... and this is for a team and manager that has some of the best youth-oriented ratings in the game.

This has definitely been tweaked over the years, certainly since FM10. Part of the problem is half the time when we make it extraordinarily difficult for the user to sign fantastic prospects we get complaints of "there's no way this player is worth £20m - that's ridiculously unrealistic!" when really that's just the club slapping a 'not for sale' price tag on a player.

Also bear in mind scouts see the PPA, not the PA. A scout could say he's going to be the best player in the game, but he could actually only have a PA of 140 or so.

Think the main problem is one of competition - it's too easy to sign these players because we're not being fought in most cases.

The agent should be doing his job here and pimping the player out to as many similar clubs as possible once a bid has been made (depending on the attributes of the agent, of course).