Influence on your Reserve team

Hi, I am thinking of buying FM 09, but a thing that has always bothered me in the older games was, that my prospects never played in my reserve team, because my coaches preferred the 34 year old former "stars". So is there any way of influencing which players will play? Or will I still have to loan out my future stars, letting them have worse training in a different team, so they will see the pitch?

Thanks for your help.

Personally, I don't often get my ass man missing out prospects in my reserves, although he does rotate a lot more than I do, so they don't play as often as they would if they were 1st teamers

As for having influence over who gets picked, AFAIK, the only way to do this is to control the reserve team yourself

You have three options:

1) Send your big prospects out on loan to a lower division club. Make sure that club want them to play first team football and they will get more benefit that sitting in your reserve team.

2) Stick the aging star in the first team and set him to be eligible for your reserves if and when you like.

3) Manage the reserves and pick the team yourself.

Personally, as ftg said, I don't really ever have a problem with reserve managers not picking stars.

Right click on your oldsters and unselect available for reserves - your assman should then pick your youth players