Advice on training youth

Hi all,

I'm playing Falkirk in FM2014 and have recently gotten an apparently awesome young regen with my latest intake. His name is Barry Russell, he is 16 years old and with 1 gold star for his CA and 5 for his PA according to my staff, he is head and shoulders above the rest of the youth team. Further, teams such as Cardiff and Middlesbrough have given me massive offers - one, from Middlesbrough, was actually worth 100M HUF (around 300k EUR) and they were even willing to concede a 30% profit from next sale! I'd probably have accepted it if I had been able to get a higher profit from next sale ratio, but I figured that if I'm getting so much now, I might get even more later, especially since my training facilities are pretty good. (My next best is a midfielder who has 4 star potential.)

Now, however, I'm kinda scared of screwing up and don't want to lose out on a lot of money or a good striker by experimenting. Thus I'd like at least a few pointers as to how you all train young regens. I've delegated youth training to my Head of Youth Development so far, who has cranked the intensity of both general and individual training to the highest levels, resulting in a Very Heavy training workload. Explains why the youngsters get quite a few injuries and everyone is unhappy about either their workload or their training schedule... But at the same time, I don't want to reduce training intensity so much or I fear he may not reach his potential as fast as he ought to and might drop in value, or something. (On the other hand, the "development rate" in the player profile is in the green zone, while for my senior squad, which is getting less intense training, it tends to hover in the orange, so clearly hyper-intensive training is working to some extent.)

Either way, I've consulted various guides I could find around the Net but haven't been able to find anything too comprehensive. Sometimes I even got conflicting advice, e.g. one guide suggested that youth players should get their physicals trained a lot as they develop fast in that category, another discouraged me from doing that because that might lead to injuries. Pretty much the only consistent advice I've found is that the player should be tutored, so I hooked him up with the most suitable tutor I could find in the team.

So, can anyone please give me some pointers on the following:

• How intense should training be for these hot prospects? How much should I care about their happiness with training?
  
• Should I focus on specific attributes or roles in individual training? Any attributes that are particularly worth training?
  
• Should I try to teach them PPMs? Will that help them at this point, or just take away time from more important training?
  
• Anything I should explicitly not do if I want the kids to progress well?
  

Thanks in advance.

The Tactics forum here will have in-depth guides about this, there are many routes to developing youth but the below is a newbie guide:

Team Training - Low, Ball control. (This focuses on key attributes such as first touch, passing and technique for the entire youth team.)

Match Prep - 10% (Not really needed, U18 results don't matter so much either.)

Individual Training - High, player role (or weaknesses) - Normally, you'd target specific attributes that are on the low side. But it depends on the player, his position and what role you want him to play. Individual training focuses on improving every attribute in that selection - thus, you don't usually want to give him a role like box to box midfielder as he'll spread his attributes too thin. Usually you want to train attributes key to his position, but if he has 20 dribbling already, you may as well change the training plan to find something that focus on the same key attributes sans dribbling - make sense?

Age 15-17 - Leave him in the U18's squad, give him games if you can, 15 would be ideal. Train him PPMs now and tutor his personality if need be. You want him to be professional, spirited or resolute even. Anything that combines professionalism and ambition - these two will ensure he reaches his potential.

Age 18 - Put him in the reserves, he will train with the senior team now. At this point you should be using him as a backup player, give him around 15-25 games per season (and not 15 minute sub appearances but FULL 60 to 90 minute games would be ideal). Do not EVER loan him out, you'll lose control of his development.

19+ - He should be making in-roads into your first team, or being sold for big money. If he isn't, you need to ask yourself why not? Was he not professional enough to improve? Were your training facilities just crap? Did you not give him enough game time?

if hes good enough for your 1st team move him there as soon as he become a pro

Post a screenshot of the player and we can give you specific advice on him. Otherwise the guide from isignedup is pretty good, the only thing in general I do differently from what he said is the squads, I usually have the best coaches coaching the first team squad, so if I get any amazing regens they are in the first team squad asap. Tutoring is vital, especially for determination and ppms

Thank you for the advice so far. Here he is:

For some reason the lower right "Positions" view doesn't work half the time, and I have to click on "Report" to see the stars, but anyway, he has a one-star rating for AF and Poacher, I believe. (He also has some competence in the AM © position.) About my senior squad tactic, I'm currently running a 4-3-2-1 sort of thing with two wingers and an AF, but I guess I can modify the tactics by the time I get to that point. However, I'd also be fine just making a hefty profit off him. Best tutor I managed to find for him is a "Fairly Professional" guy with 13 Determination.

Determination is irrelevant for youth development. Just focus on the personality. Fairly professional is fine, as is professional, perfectionist, Model Citizen, resolute and spirited. Those are the main positive personalities that will usually favour a youth player developing into a good player.

That boy looks like he would be a reasonable advanced forward, his first touch is the one thing that I would keep an eye on and maybe specifically train for six months at some point, otherwise I'd happily stick him on an AF training plan.