Other clubs stealing my youth intake before I even get them on trial!?

I've noticed a rather unexplained occurrence, over a load of saves, during the last 3 or 4 editions of FM.

Occasionally, I'll browse through my transfer clauses to see if I can sell or buy any clauses early.

I sometimes find random players I've never heard of, at others club, who have clauses owed to me. They are always fees after a certain number of appearances. The player usually doesn't have the club I'm currently managing in his career history.

Am I right in thinking the game is trying to simulate other clubs poaching your youth players when they are *very* young, before they even enter your U18s team? Do these clauses try and simulate compensation for this?

I like this feature, but I don't like the fact that I don't receive any kind of notification about the player in the first place, or his transfer to the other club. For example, I am managing Wycombe in my current save, and arch rivals Colchester have apparently signed one of my youngsters for a load of these clauses.

I never arranged that transfer, I never saw that player, my head of youth dev or other staff do not control my intake or anything else which could have affected this. I would never sell a (fairly) promising youngster to Col U for no upfront fee.

Can anyone explain this?

It's a simulation of transfers that would have happened when they were 10-15 years old. Obviously as players don't appear at this age in game the game just generates these 'moves' with the youth intake They may have originated at your club, but left when they were 13 for example.

They weren't stolen

Plus, as they will obviously have been on youth contracts at that age, you don't get to choose whether to sell them or not. If their family moves away from the area, or a bigger club picks them up under the stipulations of the Elite Player Performance Plan in England, you just get some compensation mostly in the form of these clauses.