How do you set up your scouts?

I'm useless at this, apparently. I don't use a chief scout. I have one, but I control what my scouts are doing.

I have one scout sent to Brazil and one to Argentina. Both are set to look for players with four-star potential. No limit on player value. Both scouts have 20 on both judging current level and potential of players.

They've been scouting there for a year. I went through all clubs in the top divisions in both countries and manually asked for scouting reports on the most interesting players. Found several good players. One of them was Luciano Acosta, who is now rated as a 4,5 world class player by my assistant. He was nominated for the Ballon d'or in his first season with me. He cost me £3 million. My scout never found him.

So what am I doing wrong here? I choose the option to scout the nation as a whole, rather than to specify whether I'm looking for a young talent or a first-team player. Is that what I'm doing wrong?

You're aiming too high with the star value, 2.5 stars represents the average ability of for strongest matchday squad so by excluding players in the 3/3.5 star range you are missing out on any number of players who could improve your squad, you also risk not spotting players who the scouts are underrating & by not looking for players in the 2/2.5 star range you lack any reports for players who are more likely to sign on rotation or backup terms which increases the likelihood of ending up with an unbalanced squad with more unhappy players than you ideally want.

How you run scouting all depends on how many scouts you actually however I would always suggest that the bulk of your scouts are not set with a min star rating requirement or is they are it's set no lower than 2 star. Once you get to a position where you have more scouts that useful assignments then it's worth having those surplus scouts working to a much narrower range of parameters.

But I don't want squad players. South American squad players won't get a work permit. I'm looking for first-team players, and they are the ones my scouts are missing. To use Acosta as an example. I had my scout set to look for four-star players. He didn't find Acosta. But when I used the same scout to ask for a short report on him, without watching him play, he gave him a four-star rating. He obviously should be finding him in the first place.

Essentially, I'm asking for four-star players, and my scouts come back with two- and three-star players, while not scouting the players that actually are four-star players.

If I go to the player search screen now and only show players playing in Brazil, my scouts don't have a star rating for the most valuable players. I don't understand why they seem to actively be overlooking the best players.

You might want to raise that in the bugs forum, there are a number of reasons why your scouts might not report on those players with a main one being a lack of interest in joining your club.

Out of interest who are you managing, what year is it, what's the max wage you can offer a first team or key player & what is your club rep?

You have to be careful in this years game due to the black star ratings. It is a lot harder to simply search for them as well. Star ratings shouldn't be your only basis. Lower your star search to mininum 3 or 3.5 and look at attributes, PPM's etc.

Barside: I'm Brentford, in 2020. I can offer my key players £300,000 a week and my club rep is 4,5/5 Worldwide.

NDavis95: I'll try that. Will see how it works and report back.

Given your wage limits & rep you probably already have a very strong squad which will limit the number of players that your scout(s) believe are worthy of a 4* rating, with a very strong squad 4* could equate to a CA of 170+.

What, specifically, would you do in my situation? I'm not looking for anything specific, necessarily, but I don't want to miss out on good players. I have 27 scouts. What would you do if you wanted to look for both established players and youth talent in, say, Germany? Send two scouts? One with a minimum star rating on current level? Three stars, in that case? And one with a minimum star rating of three stars on potential level?

What, specifically, would you do in my situation? I'm not looking for anything specific, necessarily, but I don't want to miss out on good players. I have 27 scouts. What would you do if you wanted to look for both established players and youth talent in, say, Germany? Send two scouts? One with a minimum star rating on current level? Three stars, in that case? And one with a minimum star rating of three stars on potential level?

It is going to be hard to finding players that are competent to start every match for your first team. Because, as Barside pointed out, those players would equate to 160-170+ CA.

On the other hand if you send scouts to look for players with atleast 2 star potential (and without any age restriction), they will surely pick a few of the top players playing in that country. And at the same time, most of the players will be youth whom you can develop.

Even players with 2 star CA will be more than good enough for your league matches. So do not restrict your scouts to search for a Star rating in particular. Because, worst case scenario, they are not world beaters but can still do the job in the league and in cup matches.

Hopefully this made some sense.

With 27 scouts I would simply have 1 scout in each of England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France, just ongoing scouting, no modifiers whatsoever. Then 2 scouting South America, 3 scouting Central Europe, 1 scouting Scandinavia, 1 in South Europe, 1 in Eastern Europe, 1 in North Africa, 1 UK & Ireland, 1 in Western Africa, 1 in North America. The rest I would set to scout competitions, like the CL, the EL, The World Cup, Euro Championship and their qualifying stages, The Copa and the WC qualifiers around the world, and so on. All set to ongoing, and with no other modifiers. Those that you miss with that setup, is worth missing. Out of those that you don't miss, I would have, say, the 10 best rated for each position/role scouted properly, to 100% knowledge. Oh, and 1 scouting next opposition, if you need that.

I've tried a mixture of what all of you have said in this thread. Will see how it goes. The board is allowing me 30 scouts now, so that'll give me enough room to experiment a bit.

I've got 26 but the club keeps knocking me back when I ask for additional scouts - even though the option to ask appears almost permanently

Any ideas as to the preferred arguments to get it agreed ?

I'm not really sure. I saved the game before asking just to test, and even though I won three titles last year, the board wouldn't let me hire additional scouts even if I threatened to resign. Two weeks later, they increased the number of allowed scouts from 27 to 30. And now they changed their mind again, just as I was about to hire the additional three scouts. My best advice would be to hope for a bipolar chairman.

I'm guessing that the number of allowed scouts is tied to your club reputation, and that a small increase could be enough to increase the number of scouts, while the smallest decrease in rep could change it negatively again if you're just above the limit.

In all honesty, I find this part of the game to be somewhat unrealistic. If you're new at a club, or in a tight financial situation, then fair enough, but if you're established at a club with almost unlimited resources, I can't see why a chairman would even bother if you've got 27 or 30 scouts.

how much are your scouting expenditures per year

if you miss players, read transfer rumours around the world

Interesting thread. I have always suspected that I get better results if I instruct my scouts to scout competitions as opposed to a single country. I think when you scout competitions you get a scout report on players that are not interested in joining, so therefore you get more results.

The U19 and U21 Internationals in particular seem fruitful in uncovering the hidden gems later in the game.