Dotsworthy

Yeah for sure. With PSR rules as they are I think most clubs have an incentive to develop youth, even if it's just for pure profit to balance the books. But if all clubs are highly efficient at youth development that breaks immersion also. It's hard to get the balance right and I don't envy FM in how they go about it. You can very easily bork the game and have 2000 premier League U21 players with transfer requests.

I think you can break up youth development into two separate issues: game balance and immersion. I've ran several test saves and in my opinion in terms of game balance the game is significantly better than FM22/FM23 and if you started a long term save the ratio of young/old elite players is consistent. Once you start looking under the hood or at specific players/clubs then you will see some oddities that might break immersion (like the national teams issue mentioned above). It does seem like certain clubs still have some issues with managing their young players (PSG is terrible). That said I also think in this players case he should have demanded a move. Young players are too passive. One thing I will say is that looking at specific players isn't always helpful, because as you progress through a save the number of high PA players increases. (For example, you might have just 2-3 190PA players at the start of the game and 9-10 players ten years in) So it's not optimal for all players to reach their potential. Plus then the player might have a bad personality, got unlucky with his progression etc.

Does this also apply when a human player delegates training? I.e. assistant manager and youth coaches?

It depends on what level constitutes decent. I've been playing around simming saves to see how youth players develop in FM24 and I've not seen anyone spineless make it to bottom half prem level (130-140CA). I think it would be difficult given that their other hidden attributes are likely to be mediocre also. If you managed to get one that's highly professional he could do okay I guess.

I've found the loan manager to be frustrating because he will generally get you more interest in your player, but when offering them out for fees & wages you often get offers slightly under or different and the loan manager will reject them out of hand. The only solution I've found is to tweak the offer based on what the club countered with (lower fee, non-playing wage etc) until the AI finally decides to offer something the loan manager will accept. It is time consuming and means offering out for lower than initial but eventually it will work.

18 year olds will also have a margin of error, you might not get an accurate picture until they are older, and even then it's not 100%. I don't know how a coaches rating of a player is calculated from save to save, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some randomness to it, there are a lot of youth in the game. I'm also pretty sure the players CA & reputation factor in the PA rating. Then you have the coaches judging potential stat. Not saying there isn't an issue but it could also be working as intended and your coach isn't the most accurate/your player does not have the reputation of an exciting prospect. It's not uncommon to see this. I had two players in a golden generation, one given 5 stars (164 pa) and one given 3 stars (who actually had 160 pa). The 3 star one actually ended up the better player.

When it comes to assessing youth players the margin of error is much higher than your first team. It's not unrealistic as clubs misjudge prospects all the time in real life. If you want exact values then you need the editor.

I've only seen decreases when staff are in their 60s except when they've failed coaching courses and their determination has taken a hit. This might not be considered realistic, but I don't see why we don't have CA and PA values for staff from your technical director. But then staffing in the game as a whole could do with an overhaul.

I think this is the core of a lot of people's frustrations with player interactions in the game. It's the only area where your assistant gives little to no advice, the reward for a positive interaction is a slight bump in morale, but the consequences for getting it wrong can be an angry player for a couple of months. As a system it is fine and can add to the immersion once you understand the quirks of it but for new players I don't know how they are supposed to work it out.

Oh I agree, the balance isn't quite right. In my mind if you want to play defensive football in this game you don't use a defensive tactic, but a defensive formation like 5-2-3.

The first thing I do in most saves where my squad is still a bit mixed is use fluid counter on a positive mentality and it works really well.

By that definition though this is a team that is weaker and more likely to concede chances regardless of what strategy they play. So the argument there is not that defensive strategies are too weak, but that attacking strategies are too easy for weaker teams in the game to use.

Putting aside the accuracy of the testing, I don't think a 5 point swing from morale can be seen as insignificant to the normal FM player. Sure, if you are using a meta tactic with a super squad it will feel trivial, but in a normal game that could mean the difference between a title/2nd place, or relegation.

I tend to get these when the stakes are low in a game/pre-season so I just assume the player can't be bothered, so I wonder if professionalism and ambition are big drivers. Balanced is a pretty average personality so maybe these guys just aren't as hungry as other youth players, although you would think young players would be less prone to it It would be interesting to know what triggers it.

The agent will also say there is interest in the player when there is none. I've always assumed it is just flavor text to represent the agent giving the hard sell. The only thing I have noticed with displaying how keen you are is getting more (or less) detailed feedback from the agent.