Long Term Game / Manager AI / Transfer System - Still needs tweaking

Just starting my 4th season and a few things I have noticed which still mean that the long-term game is not quite there yet. Just for info I run a medium database with England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Holland running:

1. Not enough transfers going on. End of July and there have only been 34 transfers in the whole of the Premier League for the start of the new season which to me seems low - That's just over 1.5 new players per team and this includes tiny fee transfers.

2. Through all of last season including the start of the season and the January transfer window there were only 93 players who moved into or out of the premier league. This may sound like a large number but that is only 4.5 new players per team and a large number of those transfers were for small fees. Only 27 transfers were over 3M GBP which seems low to me.

3. As an example, Man Utd at the start of this, the 4th season, have signed a whopping 3 players including a shitty goalie on a free. They have sold a few players so there first team squad of regulars includes Frazier Campbell, Craig Cathcart, Lee Martin and 36 year old Paul Scholes with stamina of 8. Jonny Evans is also a regular and although he looks like he may become good in real life, in the game he is not good enough for Man Utd and they would surely have bought someone as cover for Rio and Vidic. As of now he is the only real cover and, as I said, he is not great.

4. Youth Teams - The size of the U18 teams for all the clubs has greatly shrunk with many greyed out players now present. It means that the larger clubs are not producing any talent whether it be home grown youngsters or youngsters they bought at 16 and fed through the youth system a la Fabregas etc...

To give an example on this one here are the total number of non-grey youth players (eg U18 team) at some top clubs:

Man Utd - 11

Chelsea - 13

Arsenal - 15

AC Milan - 33

Inter - 38

Barca - 19

Real - 11

Valencia - 14

Munich - 2

Lyon - 20

Bordeaux 17

I'm playing in the French league so the level of detail is on high...French teams seem to have more youth players than the leagues with lower level detail...

The numbers are also a little skewed by the Italian teams as their youth teams are U20 and not U18 so I think they are just keeping players in there longer. I looked in the reserves of the English teams to see if these had more players in than the Italian teams due to the aforementioned reason but it is not the case. Reserve teams also have a low number of players.

5. Transfer AI - This ties in with all of the above. It seems as though teams are buying players to fill a need more than anything. I am not seeing any teams buying for the future and nurturing younger players at all. This is absolutely non-existent in the game right now.

6. The squad rotation policy is more to rest players and AI teams just seem to fill those being rested with reserve team players who are generally as old as the first teamers but are just not good enough to play. Often the reserve team is just full of players who have been there since the start of the game or they are ex-youth players who are now over 18 but way below par in terms of talent for the first team squad. Most of the reserve players are also unhappy and transfer-listed.

7. Average Age - With the above said, the average age of teams is increasing in the game. With no new, young blood being bought by the AI (unless they are the type of player that at 21 is already world class), teams are aging fast. As I said, I am only at the start of the 4th season so not sure what will happen over time but in reality top teams would be feeding in youngsters and buying young talent - NOT happening unless the young talent is already a first-teamer when he arrives.

Not sure what your thoughts are on all this. This was my biggest gripe with FM08 and the newgen system was partly to blame. I feel that the newgens are much better in this version but the AI managers do not take advantage of it at all. For example, there is a young 18 year old left winger (yes LEFT winger for England!!) and he is going to be a very good player. Not sure how good yet but he's already good. He's at Wolves and played well for them in the Championship and then in the Premiership when they were promoted. Still, not a team bought him. I'm pretty sure he will stay at Wolves until he is 21 or 22 and when a team needs a left winger because their current winger is 35 and has stamina of 8 they will buy him. In reality the big clubs would be all over him. Even if he decided to stay at Wolves, big teams would be sniffing around. This is just one example of many I am giving you too....

I know there was a thing about AI teams not buying youngsters before because it was a reputation issue but I thought that was fixed in FM09....

Apologies in advance for the long post!

Thoughts?