Youth vs Experience

Do you find more success with experienced players 30+ or with younger players who have not yet reached their potential? Any ideas??

That's a question that has a million different answers depending on circumstances and I'm sure everyone here will have a different opinion..

For me personally though, down In the lower leagues where money is tight, I would pick age and experience to aid promotion (never hurts to have a few older players to help the youngsters on and off field) plus they are usually cheaper/free agents.

However in the higher leagues, where play is generally quicker, I'll usually choose younger players and slowly phase out the older members of the team.

Again, personally, I always try and have an experienced spine to the team (gk,cb,cm) that's always a priority for me, no matter what league I'm in.

I go by the 'if they are old enough they are good enough & if they are good enough they are not too old'. Basically I get the best players I can afford, the only thing I dont do a lot of is sign players over 30, unless its a band aid for a season. That said, I usually end up with a very young team automatically, usually the youngest in my division, but I'm not setting out to do it deliberately.

In general I favour older players because you can see what you get with them and I find it easier to fit them into my team. To be honest I put very little emphasis on youth but if I see a youth team player who looks good, i'll promote him to the first team squad pretty much straight away.

When I look to buy players, I look for the player who I think will fit into my team straight away. So tend to avoid younger players then too. The reason I do this is because I think to myself it's pointless for me buying younger players when I might only be with the team a relatively short amount of time.

As there's no experience attribute I tend to buy younger players, even with their limited career history scouts are able to establish if a young player is capable of playing under pressure, can deliver consistent performances & can deliver in important matches, they can also tell me if a player is injury prone & what their personality is like even if they are 16 years old & only have a few months on the clock.

Essentially most of the risks in signing & using younger players do not really exist in FM which is probably why I've consistently won titles with squads that have an average age of less than 23 for as long I can remember & I really do hope that SI figure out a way to make experience count for more.

I really hope Alan Hansen uses this forum...

As there's no experience attribute I tend to buy younger players, even with their limited career history scouts are able to establish if a young player is capable of playing under pressure, can deliver consistent performances & can deliver in important matches, they can also tell me if a player is injury prone & what their personality is like even if they are 16 years old & only have a few months on the clock.

Essentially most of the risks in signing & using younger players do not really exist in FM which is probably why I've consistently won titles with squads that have an average age of less than 23 for as long I can remember & I really do hope that SI figure out a way to make experience count for more.

Yeah I would agree with all of this, there's no real penalty when you play with a predominantly young team other than perhaps some under-developed mental attributes...but even that's not necessarily consistent across all young players, as is true in real-life I suppose.

I always tend to have a younger squad, probably because there's generally always scope for improvement on each player across his attributes whereas (much) older players will of course gradually decline. That's maybe a bit of a generalisation but that tends to be my rational when looking for players plus I enjoy the player development side of things and grooming my youngsters (oo-er). Unless of course I'm looking for a particular set of mental attributes and the search results will only throw up older players then that's where I'll head.

If you're in the lower leagues then newly released youngsters are a gold-mine, especially if they are coming from the bigger clubs and are happy to take a low priced contract so they can get first-team football...

I like to have at least 2-3 talismanic oldies in my side (goalie, centre back and centre mid typically). Young players are great when you're a top side because they get dragged up to the level of better players so quickly because they are able to play well in a good side with good facilities. A team of young players can be a problem when you're not so great, potential is prone to not being realised and because they are so inexperienced in terms of past performances for other sides, having a full 11 of them can be a litte bit like that Forrest Gump quote about chocolate.

It's a shame FM doesn't have proper oldies when it comes to newgens though, players are dead on their feet by 36 and usually retire. Players like Totti (Maldini, every Italian footballer since the 30s basically) are never really replicated so I think experienced players are a little younger in FM than irl, probably anyone 28 and above is considered experienced.

If the game was a 'one and done' challenge (keep Villa up or win the league with Man Utd in one season) then oldies are the way to go. For a long term save (>3 seasons), youth is certainly a better way to go, almost always, with the caveat I threw in at the top. Which is a shame as I don't think that's true to reality, it's an already run argument but even Fergie's Fledglings team in 96 contained Schmeichel, Irwin, Pallister, Cantona and Steve Bruce. It is a pretty big oversight in FM for me, though I guess one could argue that there's really no precedent of a team consisting solely of world class youngsters with no elder statesmen there, thus the proof that 'experience matters as a tangible attribute' isn't a theory that's tested. I would think such a team would fail pretty miserably, but that's just me.

As a rule I try to avoid large transfer fees being paid for players over the age of 27, as I want to get my money's worth out of them for a minimum of 3-4 seasons. I generally sign players who are young, as I like to put them down a certain path of development to fit my system. However, if a good older player is available for good money and I have a gap in my team of course I will consider them too, especially when I need a stop-gap for a season or two when I have some good players coming through the academy but aren't quite ready for continuous first team football.

I try to keep my key players or core of the team between the ages of 24-29, with older players being slowly phased out of the starting 11 and younger players being phased in.

It's down to their mentals. Generally older players have the higher mentals. If you have a young squad who happen to have good mentals then you may do as well as an experienced side. Another thing to remember is the hidden abilities. Look at the personalities of your squad and that will generally give you an idea on the hidden abilities (resolute, professional etc.)