Your Youth Academy setup?

Hi,

I just wanted to hear a few people's stories about their youth team set up and the project at hand.

I have decided that I want to turn Hull City into a sustainable and well run club from top to bottom. Relying almost solely on products of the Youth set up or scouting out Homegrown, Irish and British players and avoiding making high profile/big money signings.

So I thought it would be good to find out fellow players set ups, systems, successes and the project.

A UK/Eire only game should be a fun challenge.

You need to get the board investing heavily in the youth academy and the training. You'll want to have professional staff throughout the youth set up. U18's need to be run by some of the best youth coaches in the world, I wouldn't bother with 'potential' coaches, you need experienced ones. Potential coaches can go into the U21 squad until they hit their potential in my view, but most of the time you'll have a fairly good idea if the coach is going to be first team or u18 material.

I think GK and Fitness coaches train throughout the entire squad, so if you want to free up extra U18 coaching slots it's well worth hiring a first team GK and Fitness coach that have decent working with youngsters attributes.

You'll also want to build links with clubs that are abroad depending on whether you see that as getting around the UK/Eire rule. Often you'll pick up youngsters from abroad who might be dual-nationals. I don't see this as an issue because most foreign youth are going to be arriving at your club through coach-connections so there's no reason to reject them, you're an academy of stars after all.

You'll want the scouting network to focus on U18's and you'll want to keep an eye out for any good reports. Most great youngsters are going to pop up at Manchester United, Chelsea, City and so on, you have no chance of competing with them, so don't bother unless you get lucky and they have a youth prospect who is in love with Hull - even then I'd be surprised if they wanted to move on!

You want to scout in-depth, that means you want to note all the clubs that have good academies or that produce good players on a regular basis. Southampton and Crewe come to mind, they're usually 9/10 the clubs you can poach from, and every year there's at least two or three clubs in the lower leagues that will produce a 180+ world class gem, its finding him (without using editors etc) that is the challenge. I had some world class players from Coventry City sometimes, it's random, so never ever go 'eh, this club sucks so much I'll never find the next Messi here anyway' cos at some point you'll overlook them and see this Messi2 smacking a hattrick against you and you'll wonder why you missed him!

Ireland has some fantastic talent, usually 2-4 Premiership quality youth pop up every year, but snagging them is the tricky part. Scotland and Wales are dire, Northern Ireland is a joke, it'll be a fun day when you manage to find quality in those areas. England obviously is the priority.

That said, you need to make a quota. You have a first eleven, the 'second' eleven should be players of 18-21 who should be a mix of youth and backups. Sign them on long contracts, train them up, be prepared to accept that sometimes you won't need to break up the first team, you can flog youth talent who you don't think will make it. Otherwise you should be prioritising the youth as fast and direct replacements for the first teamers. They're getting old? Phase them out, put the wonderkid on, make him the best in the world. While you're doing that, look to your youth team, identify who is good, who isn't. You'll have four levels:

0) Rubbish - Won't even make it in League 2, don't even bother 'making up the numbers' by signing these guys, just let them go immediately.

1) Flawed but decent players - You might be able to 'fix' their flaws, but you're not sure if they'll be able to cut it at your level, it's worth training them, but they are 'sellable', if you find better talent of comparable or lower age, don't be afraid to wield the axe

2) Talented players - You want one of these for each position. These guys get priority for tutoring and training, you bench them, they start the cup games, these players will form your core in the future, but you have to be aware they might not make it. I've had professional players slack off in training and fail to make the grade despite my attempts to solve their issues. If they slack, or dip, or you have a world class first teamer who is never going to be shifted by your youth player, consider cashing in or if you can, force them to be a backup talent.

3) World Class - You get these guys you give them everything, you sell your Ruud Van Nistelrooy in favour of this guy because he could be the next best thing. If you get it wrong you'll look an absolute plank, but if you get it right? You'll get all the plaudits. These guys should have all of your attention, you want them to develop perfectly, you want to babysit them from the media, foster them like a parent-child relationship and unleash them on the world. Expect plenty of tears when they want to move on to Madrid however.

Just keep hunting, you'll find a lot of duds, but when the diamond in the rough pops up, you'll be satisfied.

That said, never ever feel that you should be bound by any academy rules, personally if I play a youth-only challenge I'll make myself unsackable, because the board is finicky like that. On a normal game where you want a youth focus, it's completely doable without affecting results provided you don't focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. Manchester United have a good youth academy but they always invested at Goalkeeper and Striker, the two areas that were difficult to nuture youth talent for - it's the opposite in FM you'll find heaps of GK's and Strikers especially in England but Midfielders? You'll be looking abroad for that.