How do you find good players for lower division clubs?

[Goobertron]

Im new to FM09 but not to the series and im curious as to how to go about finding players worth buying when playing with a lower league team.

I've generally only ever managed big teams so i've been able to rely a lot on having good scouts as well as already knowing who's good and who's not by simply watching football on TV and reading the papers.

Anyhoo, as a lower league team who is naturally going to have pretty poor scouts how do i go about finding decent players at a price i can afford?

[the man]

Check their stats

[Goobertron]

Check their stats

Looking at stats isn't the problem. Its finding players worth looking at. I cant just go through every club and every player manually looking at stats.

[the man]

Well I'm afraid there is no quick fix but the only thing I can suggest is to get the best scouts possible for your club and send them to scour the country for the best players you can get.

[Feedolover]

One point to note is if your using the player search, don't tick the box "ask assistant to filter unrealistic targets", you can set a max value and wage but you can capture many a player who doesn't show up.
Also, after the first season, have a look at the big teams transfers out, because there is lots of good free transfers from players released

[heathxxx]

Looking at stats isn't the problem. Its finding players worth looking at. I cant just go through every club and every player manually looking at stats.

Unfortunately that's often still the best way. This is why I can spend literally hours searching for players at the start of a lower league save.

Otherwise it's just a case of setting your scouts to look for players, getting scout reports on players you like the look of to ensure their star rating suggests they will be an improvement to your team, or that they are rated higher than the level your playing...

...or you could pop your head into Good Player & Team Guide, where there's a few shortlists and discussions available for lower league players.

[seanydude]

trial day too

[Marquez]

Transfer Rumours tab at the league screen can give you an idea of the players who can be at least decent for a club in that division too.

[gcormack]

im sorry to tell you but hard work is pretty much the best way, just through trawling through lists of players and finding out which ones are good.

[humanriff]

In conjunction with this, its really important when taking over a lower league club not to just kick half of the squad out of the door before looking for replacments. they might look rubbish, but they're probably good pro's for that level, and if you've managed solely at a higher level, its important to understand what a good lower league players looks like.
A DC's attributes, for example, could all be 4, but if jumping, heading, teamwork, positioning, tacking, marking and strength are 13 he'll probably be pretty decent in the Blue Square North! Thats a extreme example, but I'm sure you get the point.
Likewise, a player who's attributes were mostly 8 would look rubbish, but on average he'd have better stats than some players he played against. Then you take into account budget, contracts etc and you begin to see that, despite there seemingly being hundreds of players, there's actually quite a small pool from which to select.