Youth Development

I've had '08 for a week or so - my first venture into FM! I was on CM for nearly 20 years previously.

I'd be interested to hear what everyone regards as the best chronology for training and then loaning young players =< 21. Things like do you think it's better to train 'in-house' until they're 19 or 20 before loaning? Or loan them out at 18? Have them in the reserves at 20/21? Or still try to loan them?

Regards, G.

I have various ways of dealing with my youth players, and I urge you do the same. We get a batch from the Ass man, but I also attempt to sign between 10 and 20 other youngsters from free contracts. I then go by Ass man and coach evaluations as to what I do with them. A player with great potential will be straight in with my first team. He may only play 10 games in his first season, but the exposure to the first team will be great for him. A good player will get loaned out to my highest league club. Usually I have a championship club for this, however, If the club in question doesn't play the player, I'll bring him back and put him in the reserves. As it goes down to Average / poor / very poor players, I loan them out to subsequent leagues compatible with their current ability, and should they get better, they will be rewarded with loans to bigger clubs.

For training, I've devised my own youth training programs for each position, but if one player is seriously lacking in one area I'll give him his own training regime.

A player with great potential will be straight in with my first team. He may only play 10 games in his first season, but the exposure to the first team will be great for him. A good player will get loaned out to my highest league club. Usually I have a championship club for this, however, If the club in question doesn't play the player, I'll bring him back and put him in the reserves.

Thanks Z.

You'll give him an exposure of around 10 first team games even though he may be only 16?

And it might be helpful if I add that I play in Serie A, with only Serie B playable too. I know a lot of you guys here play in England, so there's a lot more tiers available to you for loaning youths. Do you think I should make another couple of tiers playable?

More tiers would be good, but you can also loan them out to international feeder clubs you have. Although you don't see any fixtures for the club, the player does actually get gaming experience. And yea, I play 16 year olds. You may find this thread a very interesting read regarding youth players and how I deal with them.

Currently I have 19 year old Left back, promoted from within my youth academy who has played 174 club games and has 17 U-21 caps for England.

Currently I have 19 year old Left back, promoted from within my youth academy who has played 174 club games and has 17 U-21 caps for England.

Impressive!

That thread looks good - I'm off to read it now.

what i tend to do is get senior players to tutor youth players when they first arrive. if anyone shows potential they get a pro contract and shoved in the reserves as soon as they are eligible (17 in UK). this way they can train more intensely. after a couple of tutoring cycles, they get either a) first team football if they are good enough or b) loaned out to a club in concordance with their current ability.

problem is, fm08 didnt tend to produce great regens - youth development is very difficlut in 08; apparently this is fixed for 09 and the regens will be better (fingers crossed)

Great point addicted86. For players in your squad that have PPMS, get them to tutor your young players, as they can pick up the PPM's and pick up good mentality traits too.

what i tend to do is get senior players to tutor youth players when they first arrive. if anyone shows potential they get a pro contract and shoved in the reserves as soon as they are eligible (17 in UK). this way they can train more intensely.

I think I'm right in saying a senior player can only mentor 1 youngster at a time? Don't you find you have more youths than you can attach to senior players using that method?

Regarding the training - I think I read you should concentrate on a youths physical training; is that correct?

I managed to turn Jack Hobbs into a wonderkid with amazing stats aged 20, as well as hugely improve Insua by simply giving them games. About 20 league games 1st year, with some in the champions league etc then now they are playing almost week in week out 2nd season.

With regards to younger ones, 17 or under, i always found it better to leave them in the U18's with them also playing in reserve matches, with the occasional 1st team run out.

Then, ease them into 1st team much the some way with older ones.

Loan players if they won't get enough games and are 18 or 19, as this is the make or break point.

I think I'm right in saying a senior player can only mentor 1 youngster at a time? Don't you find you have more youths than you can attach to senior players using that method?

Regarding the training - I think I read you should concentrate on a youths physical training; is that correct?

Its true, but not necessary. Regens in the game are notorious for having poor physical attributes, for the human manager and the AI, so training your youths to have good physical attributes will be great if your tactic exploits the fact that all the AI have poor attributes in that area, otherwise its not needed because your "poor" physical attributes are just as good as the rest of the worlds. Its odd when you see a player with 15 Pace and Accel, and think... WOW - hes fast.!

The fact is that loaning players is only useful if you send them to clubs that will improve them and to make sure that they play enough games. This is where age and in particular CA comes in useful. For me a nice CA would be around 125+. After a season of playing plenty of games you should see your youngsters ability increase by 15-20 and by the time they return should be considered for first team duties. I would never send a player on loan if he is under 18 unless you have a real star on your hands. That's just my outlook on it though

This is where age and in particular CA comes in useful. For me a nice CA would be around 125+. After a season of playing plenty of games you should see your youngsters ability increase by 15-20 and by the time they return should be considered for first team duties.

18 sounds a good age to me (purely arbitrary of course) but the CA stats don't do much for me. I seen random ones whilst nosing about in the editor but I don't want to use Genie or Scout to see them on a regular basis - purely a personal choice, of course; each to his own. I understand what you're saying about getting them placed where they'll get games, not just farmed out to gather dust.

That's fair enough, most people don't like using those programs so I understand your reasoning. I use them personally because age can sometimes be misleading used on it's own. You could have 2 18 year olds who are far apart in ability and therefore would fare differently on loan. I suppose another way of judging could be coach reports. I generally only use players who are "good first team players" or better in my first team, so I suppose you could loan players accordingly until they achieve that rating

For me it's all about the level I'm at. When I was in lower levels I could put them in the first team fairly quickly (assuming they had the quality) as they could be a 'good League Two player' at 18 or 19. But the level I am at now competing on 4 fronts and my need to have better players to win means that just isn't possible. Occasionally injuries force my hand and I have to throw 1 or 2 'not quite there yet' 19 to 21 year olds in but that would be my limit.

As it stands my general approach is to put the high potential youngsters into the reserves as soon as they turn 17 and keep my squad trim and arrange extra friendlies on top of the Reserves fixtures. This way my 17 year olds get plenty of reserve game time which is beneficial to development. I find 19/20 seems to be the age where loaning plays a bigger role but I have had players on loan at age 22 to 23 when I've been able to loan them to top clubs who want them as first team regulars (by top I don't mean top 4 but competing in the top division of their country and with good training facilities).

First team football is important for stamina/strength development as well as mental attributes which I've found increase at a better rate when given significant game time (anticipation, decisions, composure, concentration, positioning, off the ball).

After a season of playing plenty of games you should see your youngsters ability increase by 15-20 and by the time they return should be considered for first team duties.

Am I playing a different game? I've tracked CA as well and 15 to 20 is the exception rather than the rule in my experience. I've had players on loan to top tier Spanish sides and French sides and rarely seen above 15 point gains even with plenty of playing time. Since you're not averse to using Genie Scout any chance of some Genie screenshots of these players (post the links rather than embedding them). I'd like to see if there are hidden attributes contributing to these gains you are seeing.

I actually use Miniscout because I can't seem to get the new Genie Scout working. My increase range comes from usually seeing CA increase on average between 1-2 points per month. I understand with no screenshots you can only take my word but for example in a current save I signed Eduardo from a Brazilian team and he arrived with a CA of 132, I loaned him to Sporting in September (who I don't consider to be a world class team but were the best available offering a deal for him) and in November his current CA is 136. He's played around 10 games so far for them which is a lot more than I'd have used him for.

My benefits of playing them.....

16 year old Left Back.

4 years of first team Premier League football.

As you can see, the gains are quite exceptional.

The one thing you can do with great certainty in youth development is improve their determination and hidden mental attributes through tutoring. They may not pick up PPMs (for no obvious reasons), there is a certain degree of randomness to how fast their CAs rise to meet their PAs, but if you mentor them with an older player with good determination + hidden mental stats you can be sure you are improving your player - even if the message at the end of the mentoring period is not positive, the stats would still have improved. Best of all, these stats take up no CA points.

I've bought a bunch of cheap old players to mentor my youngsters. Look at the determination column

Very impressive Wen1234

Tutoring is an area that I avoid as I have this uncanny knack of finding the gifted but temperamental youngsters who throw their toys out of the pram when someone trys to 'show them their move'.

Looking at those screenshots Nepenthez it just enforces how random development feels. The guy is a defender. Positioning and Off The Ball are in the same training category yet his Off The Ball increases by twice as much. My guess would be the weighting attached for a defender.

It also highlights the difficulty in increasing Acceleration/Pace for certain positions. I don't know about you but for 16 to 20 years old I'd expect bigger increases than 1 and 0. Here's hoping some changes have been made for FM 09 (assuming the coders don't see it as working as intended).

Also what the hell How come your players set piece attributes are increasing? Is the set piece bug a Windows problem only? (You're on a Mac as far as I remember).

I've never heard of / known of the set piece bug, so I can only assume its Windows specific. This guy is one in a million, to be fair. But some others I've played from a young age have also had dramatic increases, just not like this guy.

I've never heard of / known of the set piece bug, so I can only assume its Windows specific. This guy is one in a million, to be fair. But some others I've played from a young age have also had dramatic increases, just not like this guy.

Thanks for the response