Blooding youth players

I was wondering what generally people find is the best approach for blooding youth players into their first team?

FM08 was the first time I ever really got stuck in to a game for more than a couple seasons, but since regens were fairly cack in it, I never really got to the stage of having a really promising youth player ready for first team action.

Regens are much improved in FM09 and while I have no promising intake of my own as yet, I've managed to swipe an awesome 16 year old right-back from another team on a free. According to my scout and assman he has potential to be a Premier League star (I've just been promoted to the Championship).

Going on his current stats, he's only just a shade below the current ability of my two current first team right backs (both in their mid 20s). I envisage him being better them in a year or two. However I've always employed a strict policy of only playing my best available players, and while I employ squad rotation when playing more than one match per week, I do so with a first team squad of 22 with two players for every position, so barring injuries in that position combined with long cup runs he's unlikely to get a chance.

However, is it worth giving him a few games, i.e. will it improve his stats, or am I better off just leaving him to play in the U18s league and re-assessing the situation in 12 months?

I guess I could send him on loan - but I had my fingers burned, admittedly way back in CM03/04 - where in a Real Madrid save I had a brilliant regen goalie come through - I'm guessing he was possibly a recycled Canizares, but with Casillas as my goalie I decided to send him off on loan to a lower league team, and in that period on loan his development ground to a halt, probably due to lower training facilities. Will loaning a promising youth star to a lower league club in FM09 have a similar effect or has that been revamped in the time since CM?

Also, would playing him regularly at Championship level in his first active season in the game lead to a risk of burn-out? This is the first time in FM I've had a youth player of this quality so not quite sure how to handle the situation.

I appreciate there are likely a lot of factors at play and I'm not necessarily after a hard and fast play him/loan him/leave in U18s answer, just wondering what other people's experiences in similar situations are

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, but it isn't about a specific real life player (GPTG) and it's not tactics-related (T&TT), so I figured here was the best place for it

You'll get a lot of differing approaches and advice on this subject.

This is a good article: http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=5244

Also tutoring: http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=4791

Great read, thanks for the link!