A good way to find good out of contract players?

How do you filter players that are out of contract to find good players?

Eveery year when teams release players i sit and click through them one at a time to find gems, but that is tedius and time consuming.

It must be smarter easier way, how do you do it?

The best way (which I dont even use) I can think of is to use a scout program. But this is like cheating right?

My usual way is to go to the search screen and filter the out-of-contract players. Then change the view to sort them by a given attribute for the position I'm after (or sometimes int. caps if I'm checking for any established, aging players who might want to drop down the divisions late in their careers to a lower side). Can be a little time consuming still as I'll wade through a number of players who are for example great at finishing but dire everywhere else before I come across someone who's got a decent spread of skills.

Thanks, i cant assign a scout to scout the out of contract players can i?

A couple of ways I use:

1. Go to "World"

2. "Transfers"

3. Sort by fee (look for "released")

4. Look for players released by big clubs and give them a trial. Have found a couple of players that way when I'm a smaller club.

Or, less successful:

Search filter: "unattached" and players with good unmasked attributes such as "determination" which is sometimes unticked. I think there's an option to search via international U21 appearences too, which can be a good indicator of haveing SOME talent.

I'd check for international caps, or young players with U21 caps.

As someone else said, listing by attribute can help - i.e. defenders with good tackling, creative midfielders.

Failing that, slightly less time consuming would be to invite shedloads of them for a trial. Once they're on trial you can get a proper report on them from your coaches and make your decision. Only really works if none of the AI teams has made an offer - but it's more reliable than signing someone cos your ass man said they "be a good signing"...

Ah, nice, thank you, will try it out.

As an aside - future development?

Option to organise your own trial days - where any unattached players can pitch up and you can take a look at them??

As an aside - future development?

Option to organise your own trial days - where any unattached players can pitch up and you can take a look at them??

you can offer players trials up to 4 weeks = ]

Sorry, yeah. I meant where you could just get any players who fancied playing for your club to turn up - rather than having to invite them all yourself.

Was envisaging a message after it along the lines of

"143 players attended your trial day, your coaches thought the following players were worth further consideration:

...

...

..."

And they all come with proper reports and the like. Just a thought.

and if you were man utd it would end up being like something out of x factor.

also you really must not like your scouts, getting them to scout all those players, give them a star rating, their weaknesses and strengths

You could take on 22+ of these players on trial, covering every position, and organise a couple of friendlies, starting at some tiny team and working up to a league club.

i think this has gone from a fair question to a dreamwish feature.

and if you were man utd it would end up being like something out of x factor.

also you really must not like your scouts, getting them to scout all those players, give them a star rating, their weaknesses and strengths

They're my scouts. I'm the boss. They'll do what they're told. Rule with a fist of iron.

And, yeah, probably wouldn't work for the big teams. Though if you're managing a big team I'm not sure you'd be scouring the free agent list looking for unknown players to take a punt on.

Anyway. It's gone wildly off topic now, so I'll shut up.