A Guide For Scouting Regens

[Dexter_Morgan]

*As this is player related rather than tactics ect; I'm assuming this is the right section, if not then mods feel free to move to the relevant section.

I often get asked on here and other forums the best way to spot good regens and after a conversation with someone on Steam the other day who was struggling I thought it would be a good idea do a thread to explain how I personally go about finding regens and some of the places to look.

In this guide i'll include the following factors that should be taken in to account.

• Leagues/Countries/Players Loaded
  
• Scouts
  
• Head Of Youth Development
  
• Youth Coaching
  
• Youth Recruitment
  
• Youth Training Facilities
  

Part 1 - Leagues/Countries/Players Loaded

This is probably the most important part and though it seems irrelevant to the actual scouting it does play a big part.

Before you start a new game you should take in to consideration what kind of game you want to play. For example in my current save I am trying to make the countries behind the Iron Curtain a force to rival the Western European sides, so for that I loaded all the playable divisions that are eligible for my experiment. On top of that I loaded players from top division clubs in Southern and Eastern Europe so there is a better chance of getting regens from non playable clubs also. This has certainly worked in my save as there have been a lot of superb players come through from non playable nations such as Bosnia, Montenegro and Georgia come through.

Obviously some people can't have too large a database so you have to customise it to suit your needs. If you have only 10,000 players then things are going to be harder for you, but you should also take in to account that the FM rating system is very conservative, my laptop often gives 2 to 2 and half stars for 10 so leagues and 30,000 players but i'm in 2029 now with more than 40 divisions loaded and 80,000 players and there really isn't a big difference in the game speed bar it seems to struggle a bit on days where transfer windows open and shut, the rest of the year it is fine so I put that down purely to more activity going on in the game.

If you know what country you want to manage in (assuming you don't know the league rules before hand) it's worth loading that 1 country up with divisions as low as you intend to play. This is so you can look at the league rules regarding foreign players, for example if you are only allowed 4 non EU players and it takes 5 years for non EU's to gain nationality then it is pretty pointless loading all players from Africa or something as this won't benefit you much at all, so you'd be better getting a bigger selection from the EU nations. Spending what would be 2-3 minutes at the most doing this is better than getting a few years down the line and either packing it in completely or restarting a game.

If for example you are a small club managing in France and Spain then African nations would be worth being loaded as there is a lot of bargains there. Heath's brilliant guide to The Cotonou Agreement will explain that better than I can.

As I said earlier, this may seem irrelevant but it does have a big impact when you are 4-5 years and more down the line and struggling to find players because either league rules restrict you or you simply don't have enough players loaded to find a bargain/the next Messi and selecting the right leagues and players loaded for your game is just common sense.

Note* This is a guide for finding and producing regens only and not development or training of them*

[Dexter_Morgan]

Part 2 - Scouting

What to look for in your scout

When hiring a scout there is a few factors you need to take in to consideration. Obviously JPA and JCA are important but there are other factors to take in to consideration too.

Adaptability - You could have a 20 CA and PA scout but without a decent level of adaptability it will take a long longer when you send him on scouting missions to get results. I try and aim for a scout with at least 12 in this attribute, obviously this isn't always possible, especially in lower league saves so use common sense and get one as high as possible.

Determination - This plays a part in how many players your scout will find but also is important for hidden stats such as his knowledge of a players professionalism, consistency and injury proneness. I've found in LLM saves that when you are forced in to hiring scouts with low determination you miss out on bits of information like this as well as the cost of players from time to time, yet once I employ scouts with higher determination I get more info. It is actually a shame that SI changed the scout reports this year because the old way that went in to real detail about players was superb.

Knowledge - This can be invaluable as a small club, if a scout has multiple nations in his knowledge then obviously he'll be better to send to a nation he knows a lot about as it can reduce waiting time on reports when he's sent to an area for a specific amount of time. It's also handy because when you first hire him he is likely to have a few reports ready for you on the day he joins with players you may not know about. To find a scouts knowledge simply click the information screen on his profile.

Setting assignments

Take in to consideration how many foreigners you are allowed and the size of your club before setting assignments. If you are a manager in Bulgaria for example until your club is a lot bigger the chances of you getting a potential superstar from Spain, England and the like are very slim so if you are only allowed a limited amount of scouts it is pretty much a waste of theirs and your time sending them to an area that is a lot higher rated than yours. Instead look around the nations at roughly the same level your country is at and lower. The best way to do this is to check on the competitions list like below and scroll down to find your division to get an idea of where is good to look and then send your scout to a certain country or region.

Use the filters when sending a scout out to save yourself a lot of time. Though a scout report isn't always accurate I always send him to look for at least 4 star potential, it saves reading about dross you would never be interested in. As it is very rare I start out with a top team for the first 2-3 years I send scouts to look for players no older than 21 initially, as I get better I reduce this to either 17 or 18 years old so if he finds a player who could be key for years it helps regarding home grown rules. It's very rare after 3 seasons I sign anyone older than 18 though I do always have one or two scouting without a restriction on age just in case.

If you know of certain clubs that seem to always produce good regens then try and target that club before other clubs are aware. I'll be posting a list of clubs to target further on but for now this is a rough list of the dates each nation produces regens (credit goes to Aid the boss)

26th January

Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Dominican Rep., El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Surinam, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands

23rd February

Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, FYR Macedonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, San Marino, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu

8th March

Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, N. Ireland, Russia, Scotland, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Wales

13th March

Austria, England

17th March

Slovakia

18th March

Belgium, Czech Republic, Demark, Italy, Poland, Portugal,

19th March

Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Uruguay

23th March

Mexico

25th March

Holland

28th March

Serbia, Spain

2nd April

Argentina, India, South Africa

17th April

Indonesia

19th April

Hong Kong

27th April

Australia

7th June

Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela

13th August

Iceland

27th August

Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, East Timor, Guam, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Macau, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Northern Mariana, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen

2nd September

Malaysia, Sweden

14th September

South Korea

19th September

Chile

20th September

Brazil, Ireland

25th September

Finland

28th September

Singapore, Colombia

1st October

Norway

3rd October

Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Rep., Chad, Congo, Djibouti, DR Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé &Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar, Zimbabwe

8th October

China

16th October

Peru

2nd November

Belarus

26th December

USA

Remember that you're more likely to get better regens in the areas that you have playable or extra players loaded from. It's pointless looking for a regen in the Cayman Islands if you're playing in Serbia. Obviously from time to time you get good regens away from the countries you have loaded but bar parts of Africa, Brazil and Argentina it's pointless wasting a scouts time sending them to an area that in all likeness either not produce any decent regens at all or they will be far and few in between. Once you're allowed a lot more scouts by all means send them further afield but until then keep things as easy as possible for yourself.

If you know of a decent club for producing regens to save time go to that club round about the time they produce regens and simply check their youth team and either go by a players value to get a good idea or save time go to the little tick by a players name and left click and drag down and highlight the entire squad like below

then right click and use the scouting option, it's a great way to save time and also get there before other clubs do.

[Dexter_Morgan]

Head Of Youth Development

[video=youtube;TDtXbz7zP7k]

This is a great addition to FM. The primary role of a HOYD is to bring regens in to your team so once you hire one make sure you go to staff responsibilities > scroll down to bringing youth players in and make sure your HOYD is the one that brings new players to your club each year.

The best way of finding an ideal HOYD is to initially look for the same kind of attributes as you would in a scout with JP being more important than CA. Then look in the information bit make sure he has a good recruitment bar. In addition to that things like working with youngsters and motivation are also important. In looking for Miles' video blog about HOYD I just came across this site which has a few HOYD worth looking at.

You can also get your HOYD to find and make offers for kids from other clubs for you that your scouts may not have stumbled on. Go to staff responsibilities > Finds and makes offers for young players. I personally have the finalising deals part left for myself just in case the HOYD gets a bit overboard in signing players but also so I can have a scout double check for me.

[Dexter_Morgan]

Part 4 - Youth Coaching And Recruitment

This part is important for both scouting and producing your own regens. The poorer the club you are the more likely your facilities to produce players are also poor. If you want to be producing your own talents then the higher your youth coaching is the higher the starting standard of a regen will be which in turn should make a regens PA higher. Every time I take over a new club one of the first things I try and do is get this increased. Go to speak to board > finances > increase junior coaching. If this is accepted you can usually do it once a year, though if you get a board takeover after asking the old board a few months earlier you can sometimes get an extra in there if you ask (not always the case but it's worth checking to see)

Increasing your youth coaching is a lot easier to do than increasing your youth recruitment so make sure you use this to give you a better chance of producing your own players.

Youth recruitment is the range of area a club can scout, if you are or are planning to be a club in a small town/area then you need the youth recruitment network to be as high as possible because it goes without saying that in a town with only 5,000 people that the likelihood of getting a world class talent is going to be extremely slim.

If I am planning on being a small club I would rather there be a better network for recruitment than coaching because the recruitment is extremely difficult to improve because it's based on success and reputation so you could possibly go 8 years without an opportunity to improve it once whereas if you have a decent amount of money the coaching could be potentially maxed out within 10 years.

If at all possible for starting as a club then you should be looking at being a club with one of the following levels of recruitment in order from middling to the limit.

• Above Average
  
• Established
  
• Well Established
  
• Extensive
  

Of course in both producing your own or spotting other clubs talents higher recruitment or coaching doesn't mean that you'll never find a class regen in a small club but you're more likely to find one with facilities such as Manchester United's than FC United's for instance.

Over the next few posts (and there will be quite a few) i'm going to post teams solely with youth recruitment being anywhere between established to extensive. The junior coaching can be any level.

Note* It would have taken forever to type this lot out so I have gone in to the editor and filtered the clubs, placed them in order by nation rather than the rank of their recruitment and taken screen shots.

[Dexter_Morgan]

[Dexter_Morgan]

That's it for the top end of recruitment, as I said the coaching could be poor but for someone who fancies a youth challenge picking one of the low rep clubs on there could be useful.

[Dexter_Morgan]

High Youth Coaching

The top end of youth coaching is as follows

• Good
  
• Excellent
  
• Exceptional
  

These are the clubs with good to exceptional coaching therefor being a bit more likely to have better regens than some of the clubs in the previous posts

[Dexter_Morgan]

Coaching And Recruitment

These are the clubs with both top end coaching and recruitment so are your best bets for finding the very best regens

I hope people find this guide of use because from questions I get asked about scouting some people seem to think everything is about having the best scouts, but it's much more than that. You could have the best scouts in the world but if you are sending them to the wrong places or don't have your initial set up done in a way that gives you a good chance then it will be a struggle.

[SRL88]

Top, top, top work Dexter .

I never saw this coming, but excellent work to take the time out and do this work. Very much appreciated .

[Dexter_Morgan]

Cheers mate It was something to do while I was holidaying and waiting for a new job on my career:D

[WormboY]

. If you want to be producing your own talents then the higher your youth coaching is the higher the starting standard of a regen will be which in turn should make a regens PA higher.

So, Youth Facilities - rate of youth player CA improvement

Youth Recruiment - Regen PA

Junior Coaching - Regen CA

Am i right?

[col_nufc1]

I can't believe that I have missed this thread, excellent work Dexter , there's so much information in here, it must of took you ages to do.

I never knew about the little tick next to a players name until now :o you learn something new every day

[Purefun]

Topthread.

[diegol]

why the Topic is not being Sticky ?

[nick1408]

Australia's regens come in September, not April