Player wants first team football; how I get around this!

You must have noticed that there are an awful lot of requests from players of all ages, abilities, experience, etc. that feel they are "good enough for first team football". Right now the options on the interview are extremely limited and all of them tend to push you into a bad situation.

Hard-line approach: Tell the player you are in charge & will decide whether he leaves, or not.

Result: Player gets the hump; you fall out, he's unhappy & you often finish up having to sell him.

Medium approach: Tell the player you will sell him.

Result: Player is reasonably content but you are selling someone who you really would like to keep.

Soft approach: Promise him more first team opportunities.

Result: You have to play him in the majority of your games. As soon as he misses a couple of games he comes back asking for a transfer because you lied to him.

This feature is a no-win situation.

How I get around this?

Just don't have the conversation! Ignore it! If you want to keep the player just give him a few more first team games. You haven't promised him anything so he seems to be happier & I've not had further trouble. No player has complained about not being interviewed.

This works for me!

I do wish SI would think of a couple of less contentious replies to this question, like:

"You are doing really well right now and I'm confident you will be a first team regular in time, but you need to be patient for a while."

"I am looking to give you more first team games but the player in your position is playing too consistently well for me to drop him."

Completely agree. much easier to just ignore the players and any subsequent media questions. Sometimes they do go off to the media themselves though