Transfers - discussion on the mechanics and issues .

[Some Guy!]

What did make it into public domain is the actual transfer fee. It's irrelevant how many enquiries preceded the actual transfer if any. This is an example of actual 16 year old far ahead of pretty much any 16 year old in FM in terms of public exposure and evaluation going for measly 4 million euros (3 million if you believe different sources). Are you telling me there are higher rated 16 year olds in world football at the moment that we haven't heard about? If there aren't, why wouldn't the Norwegian club just say 'not for sale' and cash in for that surefire profit in a few years if that's what you claim frequently happens in other cases despite the general public never hearing about it?

Fun fact: In game Odegaard is one of the most highly rated young talent, already quite good, and most players do go and buy him... for about £1 million or less. That is in fact less than Real Madrid actually paid. That is hugely telling.

The thing is, that's a huge fee for Stromsgodset, and likely more than they could have ever made keeping him. If he'd gone from say, Bayern to Real Madrid for £4 million, but do you honestly think Bayern would have let him go to Madrid for £4 million, or do you think they'd have told Madrid "no".

[Äktsjon Männ]

Of course its relevant, its key to the argument. I would really expect you of all people to understand that given your post history.

The large prices quoted by the selling clubs are NOT final transfer prices and were never designed to be. They are simply the first response to an enquiry/bid and the possible start of negotiations which IRL is private discussion which is very rarely/if ever made public.

I'd agree if there was a reasonable agreeable end point to these negotiations. In the case of a 50 million pound asking price there isn't one for u18 players in FM. Sure, Odegaards club may have turned down enquiries but once a straighforward 4 million bid was made they were in no position to reject.

I don't disagree that it's ludicrous to offer several millons for 16 year olds. You shouldn't. I never do either. But I understand why other people do it. It all stems from there being that much certainty about a player at this age. I just don't agree that the resolute 'not for sale/50 millon than you very much' response in FM is in any way realistic especially as there are zero real life examples to support it.

[Some Guy!]

I'd agree if there was a reasonable agreeable end point to these negotiations. In the case of a 50 million pound asking price there isn't one for u18 players in FM. Sure, Odegaards club may have turned down enquiries but once a straighforward 4 million bid was made they were in no position to reject.

I don't disagree that it's ludicrous to offer several millons for 16 year olds. You shouldn't. I never do either. But I understand why other people do it. It all stems from there being that much certainty about a player at this age. I just don't agree that the resolute 'not for sale/50 millon than you very much' response in FM is in any way realistic especially as there are zero real life examples to support it.

Are we seriously still doing this discussion on Odegaard.

If Odegaard show us anything, FM may actually underestimate the value of young players, as FM rated Stromsgodset's asking price for him at just under £1 million. Why is this something that needs to be said more than once.

Stromsgodset is a very different situation to Bayern, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man United etc. If Stromsgodset asked £50 million for Odegaard in game and wouldn't move, I'd be honestly worried, as there's no way that keeping him would ever help them get anywhere near that money, no matter how good he is. Financially, they are likely in no position to turn down £4-5 million, and this was reflected both in game and in reality, with reality having the more exaggerated price by 300%.

If club's who really needed the money turned down big offers, yes that would be an issue. But club's with plenty of money, the biggest clubs in the world and so forth want to ask for this, can you really give examples to suggest that they'd accept far lower prices? Can you name any such transfers, in particular in recent years? You'll occasionally see players move between biggish clubs for cheapish prices, but there's usually something else going on. i.e. Pogba going to Juve.

[Äktsjon Männ]

Fun fact: In game Odegaard is one of the most highly rated young talent, already quite good, and most players do go and buy him... for about £1 million or less. That is in fact less than Real Madrid actually paid. That is hugely telling.

The thing is, that's a huge fee for Stromsgodset, and likely more than they could have ever made keeping him. If he'd gone from say, Bayern to Real Madrid for £4 million, but do you honestly think Bayern would have let him go to Madrid for £4 million, or do you think they'd have told Madrid "no".

Paul Pogba went from Man Utd to Juventus for free because Utd weren't willing to cough up a few million pounds in agent fees. Who knows. It's a different situation. A 16 year old with three national team appearances is not exactly the same as a youth team player with no first team football whatsoever. Every example you can cite is someone established enough not to fall under that bracket. I only brought up Odegaard because he's the only example of a player that age that I can remember being sought after in this manner. Still, we're talking about someone who has played two seasons of professional football before turning 16.

[Ylt]

Yeah drivel is the word. I am Danish so it's very likely my posts contain a fair amount of mistakes, but as long as we understand each other I hope it is fine.

It definitely is a test, just a very simple one. The test could have included various players, but I have no desire to invest that amount of time into it. It was a simple example that you can easily (on first try) find players with ridiculous valuations and not be able to negotiate anything that even resembles reality. As stated the player wasn't even particularly desirable and didn't have that good attributes. Why shouldn't I pick the most outrageous example I could find? It doesn't make it any less valid. The argument is not whether most transfers are extreme, but that some involve exorbitant asking prices. If you don't like my test you're welcome to do a more extensive one.

If you read my comments you will clearly see that I do not have anything against the current transfer market, I am merely stating that it is not realistic for 15-16 year-olds. I frequently use Genie Scout for various experiments and to better understand how the game works, but when I play a serious save there is no fun in using it as the game is even less of a challenge that way. Admittedly just having looked at Genie Scout once you naturally acquire a somewhat unfair edge as you'll undoubtedly get a better understanding of a lot of the under the hood factors in the game, but then again FM is a fun game and not much of a competitive game. Anybody with a decent competitive mindset could master it in a few days (with the exception of tactics). It's a nice laid-back simulation game that is thoroughly enjoyable. However this is completely off topic, and you can believe what you want.

[Some Guy!]

Paul Pogba went from Man Utd to Juventus for free because Utd weren't willing to cough up a few million pounds in agent fees. Who knows. It's a different situation. A 16 year old with three national team appearances is not exactly the same as a youth team player with no first team football whatsoever. Every example you can cite is someone established enough not to fall under that bracket. I only brought up Odegaard because he's the only example of a player that age that I can remember being sought after in this manner. Still, we're talking about someone who has played two seasons of professional football before turning 16.

Pogba has stated many times that he actually turned United down to play elsewhere. It wasn't just a case of "more monies!!". He has directly stated that he left as United refused to play him, even when there weren't enough recognised midfielders ahead of him. Source

So still going on about Odegaard? Why? Can you give any examples that in the game wouldn't have gone for even less money. Basically, what you're saying is "no, there are no appropriate examples, so I'll use this one which actually suggests that the game actually undervalues young players at smaller clubs". The lack of appropriate examples does speak to something though, it speaks to the same thing that the lack of big money moves for 15-16 year olds between big AI clubs does, that when clubs ask they're told no, and unless something else happens clubs generally won't push out the boat for those youngsters.

[YKW]

Some very enjoyable discussion there between Ylt, Some Guy and Äktsjon Männ. I thought I would quickly re-read the thread as I had lost track, and one thing that has struck me is just how early on in this thread the real issues were identified on both sides. Posts 22 and 23:

Regardless, no team in the world wouldn't sell any 15 year old for +£15 mill.

Likewise very few teams, if any, would spend £15m+ on a schoolboy.

And here the impasse began, surprisingly with two entirely correct statements. I believe that the fact that both of these statements are frequently contradicted in FM demonstrates without any doubt that there is an issue. I think that both statements should be addressed with equal attention: Why are human players happy to pay unrealistically large sums? Why are AI teams demanding unrealistically large sums?

The question of the AI is quite simple, as it simply the result of code. The human aspect is more complex and driven by a huge number of factors, most of which have been identified in this thread. There is the issue of an unrealistic level of uncertainty regarding a players relative potential, the issue of it being unrealistically easy to uncover the attributes of a player that reveal good development, the issue of money not being valued enough in game, and the consequences of spending large sums on young players being almost non existent, both in terms of unhappiness from the board, and pressure on the player in question. There is the issue of our own players perhaps being too easy to assess, and therefore sell or offer long contracts to, and the perhaps speculative issue that the knowledge that a player has a fixed potential actually increases target fixation, resulting in less than optimal transfer strategies and a tendency to try and get rid of players too easily, or for unrealistically low amounts (a hugely understated point so far). Some Guy! is also correct that use of a scouting tool can exacerbate all of these issues, although that is the choice of each individual player, and not really relevant to how the system does or should work.

RL transfers don't reach that level because clubs use common sense and don't pay those fees.

Don't forget that the user is playing a game with a different set of information and rules to real life, and so what is common sense in real life might not be so in the game. For example, in real life it is common sense not to pay £20 million for a 15 year old, for reasons that are obvious to us all. Many of these factors are muted, or even not present, in the game, and so what is 'common sense' is quite different. With even a marginal change to the factors that I identified above there could be a very large change in what is considered "common sense" in terms of buying or selling a player. For instance, if I scout a player that is "consistent" and "rarely succumbs to injury" (both things which would take a long time to discover in real life) then the price I will be willing to pay will be higher, out of pure common sense. Other things being equal, the in game player has a much higher notional value than his real world counterpart whose consistency and injury proneness is unknown. Which leads to me re-iterate this:

So to me, both of the players (AI and Human) are acting logically within the framework of the game considering the information they have available. The issue is that this behaviour is not realistic in comparison to real life.

I agree with Ylt that:

scouting in game is vastly superior to real life scouting

This, along with the other issues I identified, such as the negative consequences of spending large amounts of money in the game being vastly insignificant compared to real life, it is clear that the interests and motivations of the user need to be re-balanced. As it stands there is nothing to dissuade the user from making an unrealistically large bid, which there should be, according to the factors above.

Also according to the factors above, I hope nobody still believes that the AI simply saying "no" would be in any way a suitable improvement.

If I get the time I might test you on that claim.

I for one would love to see this, as it is a very bold claim. The players to be guessed couldn't be picked by either of you two though, to keep it as fair as possible. Äktsjon Männ, what conditions would you want? Could you do it with no scout reports? Or maybe you could have a small amount of scout report lifelines, that would enable you to get a little more information before making a choice. Of course, some agreement on what constitutes a "star" would need to happen.

[Some Guy!]

Yeah drivel is the word. I am Danish so it's very likely my posts contain a fair amount of mistakes, but as long as we understand each other I hope it is fine.

It definitely is a test, just a very simple one. The test could have included various players, but I have no desire to invest that amount of time into it. It was a simple example that you can easily (on first try) find players with ridiculous valuations and not be able to negotiate anything that even resembles reality. As stated the player wasn't even particularly desirable and didn't have that good attributes. Why shouldn't I pick the most outrageous example I could find? It doesn't make it any less valid. The argument is not whether most transfers are extreme, but that some involve exorbitant asking prices. If you don't like my test you're welcome to do a more extensive one.

If you read my comments you will clearly see that I do not have anything against the current transfer market, I am merely stating that it is not realistic for 15-16 year-olds. I frequently use Genie Scout for various experiments and to better understand how the game works, but when I play a serious save there is no fun in using it as the game is even less of a challenge that way. Admittedly just having looked at Genie Scout once you naturally acquire a somewhat unfair edge as you'll undoubtedly get a better understanding of a lot of the under the hood factors in the game, but then again FM is a fun game and not much of a competitive game. Anybody with a decent competitive mindset could master it in a few days. It's a nice laid-back simulation game that is thoroughly enjoyable. However this is completely off topic, and you can believe what you want.

Your English is fine, the issues with your posts are factual ones.

I would ask you to do the test, but your history doesn't exactly make you seem trustworthy. Other shorter tests I've run have shown the same thing time and time again though. The scouts aren't that accurate, particularly for younger players (15-16 years old), and even the clubs are never quite sure (those big money asking prices they set might correlate on the whole with PA, but on an individual basis jump widely, clubs often rate one of their worse players better than their best).

I understand that scouting tools can be useful for experiments with the game world, and they can be quite interesting. The issue I have is that you appear to have come on here initially to complain that you couldn't sign a kid you wanted at the price you wanted.

Our disagreement though seems to come down to how accurately clubs can rate their young players (which they don't actually do very accurately, nor do scouts, it's very fuzzy at that age), but also how they rate them. The simple point is such transfer simply don't happen, either in game or in the real world. So all we have to go on is human players pushing realism in game and trying to buy big club's top rated talents from them, and it is completely reasonable for them to ask such prices.

[Äktsjon Männ]

Pogba has stated many times that he actually turned United down to play elsewhere. It wasn't just a case of "more monies!!". He has directly stated that he left as United refused to play him, even when there weren't enough recognised midfielders ahead of him. Source

So still going on about Odegaard? Why? Can you give any examples that in the game wouldn't have gone for even less money. Basically, what you're saying is "no, there are no appropriate examples, so I'll use this one which actually suggests that the game actually undervalues young players at smaller clubs". The lack of appropriate examples does speak to something though, it speaks to the same thing that the lack of big money moves for 15-16 year olds between big AI clubs does, that when clubs ask they're told no, and unless something else happens clubs generally won't push out the boat for those youngsters.

Because he's the only example of an actual big fee transfer involving a player of this age. I don't care how much he goes for in FM. My argument isn't that you can't buy any youngster for a reasonable fee in FM. My argument is that there are no 14-16 year olds in the world who wouldn't be for sale for a similar fee than the most sought after 15/16 year old in recent history. The fact that there are no relevant examples doesn't support your view any more than it does mine. Bringing up someone like Wayne Rooney or 19 year old Luke Shaw is utterly disingenuous which is all I said in the initial post. Your aggressive tone towards others is hardly helping the argument btw.

[Some Guy!]

And here the impasse began, surprisingly with two entirely correct statements. I believe that the fact that both of these statements are frequently contradicted in FM demonstrates without any doubt that there is an issue. I think that both statements should be addressed with equal attention: Why are human players happy to pay unrealistically large sums? Why are AI teams demanding unrealistically large sums?

The question of the AI is quite simple, as it simply the result of code. The human aspect is more complex and driven by a huge number of factors, most of which have been identified in this thread. There is the issue of an unrealistic level of uncertainty regarding a players relative potential, the issue of it being unrealistically easy to uncover the attributes of a player that reveal good development, the issue of money not being valued enough in game, and the consequences of spending large sums on young players being almost non existent, both in terms of unhappiness from the board, and pressure on the player in question. There is the issue of our own players perhaps being too easy to assess, and therefore sell or offer long contracts to, and the perhaps speculative issue that the knowledge that a player has a fixed potential actually increases target fixation, resulting in less than optimal transfer strategies and a tendency to try and get rid of players too easily, or for unrealistically low amounts (a hugely understated point so far). Some Guy! is also correct that use of a scouting tool can exacerbate all of these issues, although that is the choice of each individual player, and not really relevant to how the system does or should work.

What I'm stunned by is you reading through the thread, seeing the rock hard block it's at, then ramming your face straight into it with the force of a £15+ million bid for a 15 year old.

The simple point is that the unrealistic behaviour is entirely human side. It would be like coming on here and complaining "why do I concede 40 goals a match when I play with all my players in striking positions?!?!" or "why can't I sign my 47 year old scout to a playing role?". Human players are the ones making the unrealistic bids and then complaining about them. We have literally no reason to believe that clubs should accept less, and nobody has any evidence to suggest they should. If anything, the evidence still points to the opposite.

Personally, I agree that there aren't enough downsides to humans making these stupid bids. If something using cheat tools signed a 200 PA 15 year old from Bayern for £40 million, the board should scrutinise that deal heavily. Not veto it, but if the player had some issues with their development, pressure should be on the player. That player should also be under heavy pressure, and it would likely change some of their personality attributes, potentially hurting their development (that is, making them a over confident, maybe a chance, not a high one, but a chance of hurting professionalism and such). It shouldn't happen to every young player, but to some.

I however don't agree that it's been demonstrated that scouting is too good in game. I'm actually so unconvinced that I might run my own test, just to see. How about these for parameters. I'll play as "big club", say Man United. I will have a number of 20/20 scouts. I'll send them across the world, holiday for 2 years (so regens and such will be produced and scouted), then return and check what they've found. I'll then check through each of the top prospects, and compare the under the hood values (using the IGE) to the ratings and see exactly how accurate they come out.

I do however reject that using scouting tolls is only a slight problem to this. It's a system breaking one. People can use them, people can do what they like, but they can't complain that it's "UNWEALISITIC!!!" when they are breaking how the system works. If Bayern think they have the new Messi, they're more than welcome to want the most stupid of stupid money for him.

[Ylt]

@YKW

A very good summation of the discussion in this thread. Not because it generally is in agreement with my line of reasoning, but because it highlights the various valid points on either side of the argument. I attempted to do the same in post 206, but that wasn't nearly as succinct and unbiased.

[YKW]

The simple point is that the unrealistic behaviour is entirely human side.

Well there are thousands of years of trade between people that would suggest you are hopelessly wrong here. Not to mention the many economic principles that you obviously have no knowledge of. As for this thread hitting a rock hard block, I had already identified it as your head, that's why I chose not to address you aside from having some humility and agreeing with you where you have been correct.

Let's simply agree to disagree then, and move on with the thread.

[Guest]

Because he's the only example of an actual big fee transfer involving a player of this age. I don't care how much he goes for in FM. My argument isn't that you can't buy any youngster for a reasonable fee in FM. My argument is that there are no 14-16 year olds in the world who wouldn't be for sale for a similar fee than the most sought after 15/16 year old in recent history. The fact that there are no relevant examples doesn't support your view any more than it does mine. Bringing up someone like Wayne Rooney or 19 year old Luke Shaw is utterly disingenuous which is all I said in the initial post. Your aggressive tone towards others is hardly helping the argument btw.

There are not many of these deals irl because FIFA transfer rules prevent them from taking place unless it's a domestic move & this is simulated via the youth intake system.

[Äktsjon Männ]

There are not many of these deals irl because FIFA transfer rules prevent them from taking place unless it's a domestic move & this is simulated via the youth intake system.

Isn't this a completely different matter to the one discussed? I would assume that if I'm allowed to bid then I'm not breaking any FIFA rules in FM? So we're in fact not talking about illegal transfers.

[Some Guy!]

Well there are thousands of years of trade between people that would suggest you are hopelessly wrong here. Not to mention the many economic principles that you obviously have no knowledge of. As for this thread hitting a rock hard block, I had already identified it as your head, that's why I chose not to address you aside from having some humility and agreeing with you where you have been correct.

Let's simply agree to disagree then, and move on with the thread.

Which economic principles are you suggesting that I've missed here? The unrealistic behaviour is human side, that is indisputable in this. When you present the logic:

1. There are no such transfers in real life

2. There can be such transfers in game

- Therefore, something is wrong here

You equally have to note:

3. There are no such AI transfers in game

Which suggests that the "unrealistic" part here is human side.

Isn't this a completely different matter to the one discussed? I would assume that if I'm allowed to bid then I'm not breaking any FIFA rules in FM? So we're in fact not talking about illegal transfers.

I would guess what he means is that in game such transfers don't go through until they're 16. As I'm not in the business of signing 15 year olds in game, I've not seen this though.

[Ylt]

I don't see many people complaining that you're entitled to buy a youngster for +£15m, but rather people that argue that a situation in which you would want to do that is unrealistic. I am arguing that it is a problem that in many cases it is rational to pay that kind of money for a 15-16 year-old because it's so likely that he turns into something great. I'd love a game where I'd be scared off by a £5m asking price, but for many youngsters that seem like a bargain in game. The point is that the game creates an environment where it is completely viable to buy teenage boys for crazy amounts.

I do however reject that using scouting tolls is only a slight problem to this. It's a system breaking one. People can use them, people can do what they like, but they can't complain that it's "UNWEALISITIC!!!" when they are breaking how the system works. If Bayern think they have the new Messi, they're more than welcome to want the most stupid of stupid money for him.

But such a situation is very unlikely to ever occur because real life potential ability is such an imperceptible concept. As we saw with the real life Messi no one had a clue about his true potential when he was 15. On another note, even when people cheat and use external scouting tools it's still a valid point and the game shouldn't actively prevent people from cheating by introducing unrealistic measures. If people want to cheat and find high PA players and buy them cheaply they are more than welcome to do so on there own saves. They don't disturb or irritate anyone in doing so, unless they do it in public challenges or online games. If some clubs had supernatural scouting abilities in real life they'd be scouring the world for youngsters who will turn into stars in the future for very low fees.

Altogether, the discussion is not about complaining but about improvements to the scouting system making the game harder and more immersive.

[sirgiorgio]

I don't need to read more into what the game is telling me. The scout is telling me he's a future star, he shouldn't be. The club will let me pay £50m for a 17 year old, it shouldn't be. The selling club want £50m they shouldn't be.

Completely agree. FM has made some steps toward the right direction, but it's still not enough. The question is not "why do they want 50?". The questions are: how does the selling club know that the player is going to be a star? And how do my scouts know?

Let's say I cheat, I use an editor and discover an unknown, 16 year old French midfielder called Paul Pogba playing for Le Havre U18. His CA is 120, definitely not good enough to play in my first team, but his PA is 185 (I know because I cheated!) I make a reasonable offer, considering his CURRENT attributes, CURRENT playing stats, contract, age, etc. They refuse the offer and answer "the player is not for sale", or "we want 100m for him". OK, I cheated, but it's obvious that the AI "cheated" too!

I still don't understand whether or not PA can be seen by the AI. If it can't, as some people here claim, then someone should clearly explain why Schalke "shouldn't want to sell" a teenager who is listed for loan and made 6 senior apps with an average rating of 6.6. And why a scout should recommend him as a future star.

[Guest]

Isn't this a completely different matter to the one discussed? I would assume that if I'm allowed to bid then I'm not breaking any FIFA rules in FM? So we're in fact not talking about illegal transfers.

That does bring up an interesting issue for me to research, do clubs shy away from making making an offer before a players turns 16 or 18 because of the risk that the player could suffer a career ending injury or lifestyle change before they are allowed to join or is it because they are prevented from even making an approach in the first place & we need to include that rule in FM.

[HUNT3R]

I don't see many people complaining that you're entitled to buy a youngster for +£15m, but rather people that argue that a situation in which you would want to do that is unrealistic. I am arguing that it is a problem that in many cases it is rational to pay that kind of money for a 15-16 year-old because it's so likely that he turns into something great. I'd love a game where I'd be scared off by a £5m asking price, but for many youngsters that seem like a bargain in game. The point is that the game creates an environment where it is completely viable to buy teenage boys for crazy amounts.

It would be interesting to see some examples of this. Examples of 15-16 year olds rated as Messi-like (5 stars or whatever), so you'd be willing to spend that amount of money on the kid. With the black stars (uncertainty) introduced this year, I'd be more hesitant to spend that much on an unproven youngster. I'd love to see what their actual CA/PA is, to see if and how far mistaken coaches could be.

[Some Guy!]

I don't see many people complaining that you're entitled to buy a youngster for +£15m, but rather people that argue that a situation in which you would want to do that is unrealistic. I am arguing that it is a problem that in many cases it is rational to pay that kind of money for a 15-16 year-old because it's so likely that he turns into something great. I'd love a game where I'd be scared off by a £5m asking price, but for many youngsters that seem like a bargain in game. The point is that the game creates an environment where it is completely viable to buy teenage boys for crazy amounts.

But such a situation is very unlikely to ever occur because real life potential ability is such an imperceptible concept. As we saw with the real life Messi no one had a clue about his true potential when he was 15. On another note, even when people cheat and use external scouting tools it's still a valid point and the game shouldn't actively prevent people from cheating by introducing unrealistic measures. If people want to cheat and find high PA players and buy them cheaply they are more than welcome to do so on there own saves. They don't disturb or irritate anyone in doing so, unless they do it in public challenges or online games. If some clubs had supernatural scouting abilities in real life they'd be scouring the world for youngsters who will turn into stars in the future for very low fees.

Altogether, the discussion is not about complaining but about improvements to the scouting system making the game harder and more immersive.

We'll see how the test does. I've set up a game using the same initial setup as for my regen numbers soak test. It's perfect conditions (as many 20/20 scouts, edited using the IGE as the club would allow, to give the club the best possible chance), will run for two years, I'll see how many different types of youngsters it finds, i.e. 5 black stars 4 gold stars (5B4G), 5B3G, 4.5B3G etc. and see just how many are actually high potential, and how often they get it wrong. We should be able to see how accurate the scouting actually is.

Additionally I'll check their "first response asking price" from the club, and ideally others at that club to see how they rate them.

[Some Guy!]

Completely agree. FM has made some steps toward the right direction, but it's still not enough. The question is not "why do they want 50?". The questions are: how does the selling club know that the player is going to be a star? And how do my scouts know?

Let's say I cheat, I use an editor and discover an unknown, 16 year old French midfielder called Paul Pogba playing for Le Havre U18. His CA is 120, definitely not good enough to play in my first team, but his PA is 185 (I know because I cheated!) I make a reasonable offer, considering his CURRENT attributes, CURRENT playing stats, contract, age, etc. They refuse the offer and answer "the player is not for sale", or "we want 100m for him". OK, I cheated, but it's obvious that the AI "cheated" too!

I still don't understand whether or not PA can be seen by the AI. If it can't, as some people here claim, then someone should clearly explain why Schalke "shouldn't want to sell" a teenager who is listed for loan and made 6 senior apps with an average rating of 6.6. And why a scout should recommend him as a future star.

The AI receives the same information you do from coaches. They get an idea, some gold stars, some black stars. Sometimes they can be quite wrong and rate players with 140 potential as though they are the next Messi and slap those £40+ million price tags on them. They price they ask is based on a large number of factors though, not least the stature and finances of a club.

[YKW]

Which economic principles are you suggesting that I've missed here? The unrealistic behaviour is human side, that is indisputable in this. When you present the logic:

1. There are no such transfers in real life

2. There can be such transfers in game

- Therefore, something is wrong here

You equally have to note:

3. There are no such AI transfers in game

Which suggests that the "unrealistic" part here is human side.

That would be a lovely story if it in any way resembled what I have gone to great lengths to express. I have repeatedly identified the unrealistic behaviour on the human side, I know it is there, it is old news to me. You are still languishing in the primordial ooze of discussion, where us adaptable creatures are flamboyantly soaring through the skies of new ideas, as we shower your primitive abode with excrement, inviting you to use it as the basis for your own evolution.

If you genuinely believe that the unrealistic part is "entirely human side," then quite frankly you are a joke, with absolutely no concept of what money is or means. I've been very thoughtful about summarising the discussion on both sides, and it doesn't appear you are willing to even consider any of it. Good day to you sir.

[Some Guy!]

That would be a lovely story if it in any way resembled what I have gone to great lengths to express. I have repeatedly identified the unrealistic behaviour on the human side, I know it is there, it is old news to me. You are still languishing in the primordial ooze of discussion, where us adaptable creatures are flamboyantly soaring through the skies of new ideas, as we shower your primitive abode with excrement, inviting you to use it as the basis for your own evolution.

If you genuinely believe that the unrealistic part is "entirely human side," then quite frankly you are a joke, with absolutely no concept of what money is or means. I've been very thoughtful about summarising the discussion on both sides, and it doesn't appear you are willing to even consider any of it. Good day to you sir.

...okay, I'll be here waiting for you with the results of the test I'm running when you're down from your high. I'm not sure if it's delusions of grandeur, but it sounds like strong stuff.

I get that you feel that clubs shouldn't be asking that much, but what exactly do you base it on. We have literally no real world cases to draw on to suggest otherwise.

I've expressed my concerns with the "otherside", most notably my disagreement with the poster who posted in this thread a complain directly about not being able to sign a player he found on a third party tool. I'm more than happy to listen to the otherside, but there is no level of evidence or reasonable discussion given, and simply "I feel this way" from someone who's directly admitted to using third party tools to find players isn't exactly enlightening discussion.

Again, if you have some evidence to provide, particularly your attempts at an economics debate that never went anywhere as you've not fleshed it out further than alluding to it, then I'm more than happy to discuss it like anything else. So far though, what you've got is "isn't it obvious" without any evidence to base it on.

[HUNT3R]

There's good discussion so far in the thread in general. Please keep it that way and on topic, rather than having digs at each other.

[Dr. Hook]

There's good discussion so far in the thread in general. Please keep it that way and on topic, rather than having digs at each other.

You read my mind; I am starting to see a veer towards personal attacks and snark, and I'd hate to see this become a den of infractions

[Some Guy!]

After one season, here are my scouts' top 12 players who are 16 or younger:

Number / Age / Club / Star Rating / PA / First Response Price

1. 15 / Koln / 5B3.5G / 114 / £6.25 million

2. 16 / Levante / 5B3.5G / 152 / Release Clause (£625k)

3. 16 / Martimo / 5B3.5G / 169 / £12.25 million

4. 15 / Rennes / 5B3.5G / 158 / £9.5 million

5. 14 / Sochaux / 5B3.5G / 143 / £9.5 million

6. 16 / Cagliari / 5B3.5G / 164 / £6.5 million

7. 14 / Mainz / 5B3.5G / 129 / £9.5 million

8. 14 / Hertha / 5B3.5G / 151 / £23.5 million

9. 16 / Standard / 5B3.5G / 174 / £22 million

10. 16 / Standard / 5B3.5G / 142 / £5.5 million

11. 15 / Anderlecht / 5B3.5G / 148 / £23 million

12. 15 / Club Brugge / 5B3.5G / 135 / £18.5 million

For the stars, it's in the format 5B4G, that is 5 black stars, 4 gold stars.

Note, I went through some of these youth teams for the lower potential players, some notable results:

Price / Potential:

Mainz:

138 - £7.75 million

129* - £9.5 million

117 - £675k

Hertha:

151* - £23.5 million

157 - £19.75 million

Koln:

92 - Refused to even discuss at first, accepted £5 million after rejecting £4 million as "disappointing"

114* - £6.25 million, they accepted £3.25 million

That's one year of scouting. For reference sake for the transfer figures. Hertha for the players they asked £23.5 million for, will accept £11.5 million.

Will update with the best they find by next year.

[YKW]

I get that you feel that clubs shouldn't be asking that much, but what exactly do you base it on. We have literally no real world cases to draw on to suggest otherwise.

What????

I am precisely saying that the fact there are no real world cases of these types of transfers is the evidence that they are unrealistic. Are you trying to claim that absence of evidence is evidence of absence? Because that would be quite a stupid thing to do.

What on earth would constitute a real life case to you then, in the context of what you say there? If a young player transfers for a high fee then that proves your point, and if none transfer for high fees then that proves your point also?

In terms of economics you have absolutely no understanding of the concept of value, and how different agents balance the benefits of a good against things like it's cost and the resources they have available. The entire issue in this thread revolves around the correct statements from Alex and Ylt that I quoted at the start of my previous post. £15 million is an unrealistic sum, both to ask for and to be willing to pay. This is because the factors that are influencing the users perception of the value of any particular player are such that the value is higher than in real life, both to the human and AI.

If you can begin to grasp the concepts of the different ways that different entities assess value, then you will be well placed to understand this thread, as you will see how factors such as consistency and lack of injury proneness inherently increase the perceived value, and inconsistency and injury proneness inherently decrease it, in a manner which does not reflect real life.

Just so I am clear, again in terms of Alex's and Ylt's posts above, You believe that it is unrealistic to offer £15 million for a 15 year old, but not unrealistic to reject it? That is fine, and that says it all. No problem, let's agree to disagree and move on

Nice work with your experiment, although what you should do if you would like it to have any relevance, is come up with a list of things that a human player will look at before deciding his targets. For instance, when faced with your shortlist of players, and being unaware of the PA figures, I would look at things like: the injury proneness, the consistency, the personality, determination, and whether the player had a good distribution of stats for his position. What I think you should do is remove players from your list that don't have positive attributes in this respect (ie the players that a human would be more likely to disregard), and then compare the asking prices and PAs of that group. Also what would be interesting would be to see the difference in development between your select group and your intitial shortlist. It should be very easy to assemble a group of players who will develop positively.

As you seem to have ignored, this is a key part of the complaints about scouting, and your experiment sadly does not account for this at all.

[Some Guy!]

What????

I am precisely saying that the fact there are no real world cases of these types of transfers is the evidence that they are unrealistic. Are you trying to claim that absence of evidence is evidence of absence? Because that would be quite a stupid thing to do.

What on earth would constitute a real life case to you then, in the context of what you say there? If a young player transfers for a high fee then that proves your point, and if none transfer for high fees then that proves your point also?

In terms of economics you have absolutely no understanding of the concept of value, and how different agents balance the benefits of a good against things like it's cost and the resources they have available. The entire issue in this thread revolves around the correct statements from Alex and Ylt that I quoted at the start of my previous post. £15 million is an unrealistic sum, both to ask for and to be willing to pay. This is because the factors that are influencing the users perception of the value of any particular player are such that the value is higher than in real life, both to the human and AI.

If you can begin to grasp the concepts of the different ways that different entities assess value, then you will be well placed to understand this thread, as you will see how factors such as consistency and lack of injury proneness inherently increase the perceived value, and inconsistency and injury proneness inherently decrease it, in a manner which does not reflect real life.

Just so I am clear, again in terms of Alex's and Ylt's posts above, You believe that it is unrealistic to offer £15 million for a 15 year old, but not unrealistic to reject it? That is fine, and that says it all. No problem, let's agree to disagree and move on

Nice work with your experiment, although what you should do if you would like it to have any relevance, is come up with a list of things that a human player will look at before deciding his targets. For instance, when faced with your shortlist of players, and being unaware of the PA figures, I would look at things like: the injury proneness, the consistency, the personality, determination, and whether the player had a good distribution of stats for his position. What I think you should do is remove players from your list that don't have positive attributes in this respect (ie the players that a human would be more likely to disregard), and then compare the asking prices and PAs of that group. Also what would be interesting would be to see the difference in development between your select group and your intitial shortlist. It should be very easy to assemble a group of players who will develop positively.

As you seem to have ignored, this is a key part of the complaints about scouting, and your experiment sadly does not account for this at all.

No, am I not claiming that the absence of evidence is evidence, I am claiming that the absence of any such cases, when the expected result from the game is an absence of any such cases, doesn't provide any evidence that anything in the game is wrong.

A real world case would be a recent case of a transfer of a highly rated youngster (ideally we'd be talking about a 15/16 year old player, as that's what the debate has become), between two big clubs, for a small fee. Big clubs don't let go of their young talents. They sometimes might leave on a free transfer (i.e. Pogba, but he was a bit older), but when we talk about such transfers, it's generally smaller club to bigger club. If the Odegaard transfer is anything to go by (and it's been brought up here time and time again), then the game is actually underestimating (~£1 mil in game, ~£4 mil in real life).

In terms of economics you have absolutely no understanding of the concept of value

That is a baseless personal insult. It has no place in a calm reasoned discussion. If you feel I lack an understanding of economics, please explain in terms of economic principles where you feel I'm wrong, rather than just using it as an insult.

At no point did I say that it was realistic for a 15 year old to go for £15 million (though we do have a real world case of an equivalent level transfer of a 16 year old, Theo Walcott, who in current terms would be around £16/17 million), but rather that it's completely reasonable that clubs in a strong financial position, with absolutely no reason to sell, and the statute to keep the best, will outright reject such bids, and any that they'd consider would be well beyond reasonable.

Nice work with your experiment, although what you should do if you would like it to have any relevance, is come up with a list of things that a human player will look at before deciding his targets. For instance, when faced with your shortlist of players, and being unaware of the PA figures, I would look at things like: the injury proneness, the consistency, the personality, determination, and whether the player had a good distribution of stats for his position. What I think you should do is remove players from your list that don't have positive attributes in this respect (ie the players that a human would be more likely to disregard), and then compare the asking prices and PAs of that group. Also what would be interesting would be to see the difference in development between your select group and your initial shortlist. It should be very easy to assemble a group of players who will develop positively.

A "group that will develop positively" and "the very best in the world" are two entirely different things. The focus here is whether the scouts will actually be able to identify the very best young players at that age group, hence making it too easy to find it. If you really want I could strike out the ones with unfavourable characteristics, but that's essentially doing nothing for the experiment, as 135 PA player with a good attitude is still a 135 PA player with a good attitude. The claim being tested was people stating that they could find the best players in the world at 15/16 through their scouts, and they were "too accurate", and meaning that it "forces" the player to go for these players they're demanding such ridiculous prices for.

[Dr. Hook]

I think it's worth keeping in mind here what Alex posted some way back: 90% of players with top PA's never reach that level. Whether or not it is too easy to identify talent in FM is where the discussion is really fruitful, but at the same time, the uncertainty level remains quite high. As it stands, perhaps it is too easy for users to develop that talent. Abuse of the tutoring system is one way, but outside of that, the AI just cannot do what the human can do in terms of specialized development.

[Äktsjon Männ]

A "group that will develop positively" and "the very best in the world" are two entirely different things. The focus here is whether the scouts will actually be able to identify the very best young players at that age group, hence making it too easy to find it. If you really want I could strike out the ones with unfavourable characteristics, but that's essentially doing nothing for the experiment, as 135 PA player with a good attitude is still a 135 PA player with a good attitude. The claim being tested was people stating that they could find the best players in the world at 15/16 through their scouts, and they were "too accurate", and meaning that it "forces" the player to go for these players they're demanding such ridiculous prices for.

The scouts are most useful for revealing attributes and personality traits, which they do with 100% accuracy. As far as I can see you're the only one still banging on about black and silver or whatever stars. These only make up a rather small part of the whole picture which goes into pinpointing a future good player, one that's worth a multimillion transfer fee. The label 'very best in the world' is also only used by yourself only. No-one, to my knowledge, is claiming that they can identify all the great players in the game through scouts. The actual argument is that once we spot a player that's going to be good we're very rarely wrong if we know what to look for.

BTW, a 135 PA player with good attribute distribution and great personality has a considerably greater chance of being a great performing player than a 180 PA player with unbalanced attributes and rubbish attitude. I would expect you to know that even though your posts seem to ignore the notion.

[Cougar2010]

Because he's the only example of an actual big fee transfer involving a player of this age.

I am precisely saying that the fact there are no real world cases of these types of transfers is the evidence that they are unrealistic. Are you trying to claim that absence of evidence is evidence of absence? Because that would be quite a stupid thing to do.

What on earth would constitute a real life case to you then, in the context of what you say there? If a young player transfers for a high fee then that proves your point, and if none transfer for high fees then that proves your point also?

You need to consider why there are very few cases IRL.

We are typically talking about a 16-19yo player whose career is on the up and is perceived to be talented.

Question 1

Do these players exist in RL? - Of course they do.

Question 2

So why don't we see more examples of these players changing clubs between 16yo & 19yo? - Well unless you own or manage a RL football club we can only speculate to some extent. Generally speaking players either seem to move before they are 16yos which is represented by the youth intake or they wait until they have proven themselves more at 19-21yo or older. So is it simply a case that bigger clubs don't chase these players? or do the smaller clubs put them off by saying not for sale or quoting high prices? We don't know, all we know is that it is rare IRL and when it does happen it is almost always small club > big club, virtually never between two big clubs.

If we look at the England U19s squad as an example over the last few years virtually all of them are at the same club at 19yo as they were at 16yo. We also have a second recent example there with Dele Alli recently moving to Spurs although he will be 19yo by the time he gets there in the summer. The terms weren't released but the media speculated it was around £5m + add ons.

This then leads onto the two discussion points.

The first which is that the unrealistic transfer prices paid for players of this age in FM is caused by the user.

& the second (which YKW & Ylt have been pointing out) that if scouting was "less predicable" than the first point wouldn't happen or at least we would see instances reduced.

I'm all for making scouting less accurate but to do that you need to establish how accurate it is now, which is what Some Guy is trying to do.

I would also speculate that even if scouting was made harder it wouldn't reduce the first point significantly because the users that are causing it are often using outside of game knowledge to identify the talent.

[Ylt]

From what I have seen of it this series is a good example of how scouting and player identification is overpowered and being exploited in the lower leagues to rocket towards the top:

. It's not that relevant in terms of high potential youngsters with high fees as most of the players in the series are unlikely to have huge potential. It does, however show that it is very easy to scout and develop great potential youngster for your current level to help you soar through the leagues and I cannot see how this cannot be extrapolated to bigger clubs and very high potential youngsters.

You don't understand what a syllogism is.

That's a fine example of a syllogism. Whether you decide to infer something from it that cannot be rationally done is not my fault. I explored what appears to be your issues with it i.e. whether the transfers were being forced be people or facilitated by the game. Regardless it is a sound deduction as from the premises it must be deduced that the game environment is different from reality, although that's not necessarily the games fault. I was merely outlining my reasoning, which starts out with the difference in transfer behaviour in game and in real life and necessarily leads to the realisation that something different is going on in-game. Then I went on to argue what that something is etc.. On another note, It's completely irrelevant whether the AI does these transfers, since it by no means is playing the game optimally.

I've expressed my concerns with the "otherside", most notably my disagreement with the poster who posted in this thread a complain directly about not being able to sign a player he found on a third party tool. I'm more than happy to listen to the otherside, but there is no level of evidence or reasonable discussion given, and simply "I feel this way" from someone who's directly admitted to using third party tools to find players isn't exactly enlightening discussion.

Please explain to me how that is detrimental to the discussion? Just because I used Genie Scout to quickly find an example refuting the claim that you could negotiate these types of deals into reasonable amounts everything I say is now worthless? You seem to have some irrational problem with third party scouting tools. If the discussed player was found legitimately the point would be the exact same. I have provided plenty of evidence to help estimate the real life market for 15-16 year-olds and found that it seems to be considerably lower than in game. Ultimately a £4m valuation of Luke Shaw as 16 was considered extremely high in the words of The Independent. How is that not an indication of the real life market. Can you provide me with better evidence than existing transfers and negotiations? It'd be interesting to contact the top clubs around the world and hear their opinions, but I'm afraid they'd ignore me.

You claim there are no such examples of playing going for such high prices, but have never dealt with the argument that the reason you don't see it is that clubs actually get the point when they're told "no", hence not signing players for stupidly inflated prices (except United, they love signing young Englishmen for ridiculous prices).

I have dealt with that since the first page. I operate from the assumption that anything has a price and I believe the world around is producing countless examples of that. This is exactly why I am trying to direct this discussion towards an estimation of the real life transfermarket. I also explained that and why I am doing it once before. Based on the research I have done (no doubt fairly limited) I have produced the claim that in real life £15m would be enough to buy any 15-16 year-old. Then I went onto backward chaining (obviously mainly hypothetical) and began with whether big clubs would actually make those bids (£15m) if they had sufficient knowledge of players potential abilities and inferred that they probably would since real life high current ability players are worth much more. From that I concluded that since they don't make such offers they don't have sufficient knowledge i.e. 15-16 year-olds are not worth +£15m in real life. If anyone came in with such a bid the selling club would sell immediately just as any banana plantation would sell instantly if somebody bid $5/kg above the market price. Those cases of just no don't exist. There do exist examples of the buying club not being willing to me a sellings club's valuation, but that valuation is never above £15m.

[Some Guy!]

After 2 years, I now have 14 players given 5B3.5G by the scouts, let's see how they do:

Number / Age / Club / PA / First Response Price

1. 15 / Wolfsburg / £9 million / 109

2. 15 / Aston Villa / £23 million / 155

3. 15 / Genk / £21 million / 168

4. 15 / Gent / £18 million / 137

5. 16 / Monaco / £31 million / 176

6. 15 / Sochaux / £5.75 / 143 <- From last year's list, price down from £9.5 million

7. 16 / Anderlecht / £26 million / 148 <- From last year's list, price up from £23 million

8. 16 / Koln / £11 million / 114 <-From last year's list, price up from £6.25 million

9. 16/ Hoffenheim / £10.25 million / 137

10. 15 / Stuttgart / £48.5 million / 171

11. 15 / Atlanta / £8.75 million / 173

12. 15 / Augsburg / £6.75 / 134

13. 15 / Hertha / £23.5 million / 151 <-From last year's, price unchanged

14. 15 / Club Brugge / £23.5 million / 156

Wolfsburg:

109* - £9 million <- Promoted to Wolfsburg II

131 - £2.6 million <-Scouts rate him 4.5B2.5G

120 - £975k

130 - £5.25 million

136 - £10.5 million <- Scouts rate him 5B3G

135 - £16.5 million <- Scouts rate him 4.5B3G

139 - £6.5 million

129 - £4.7 million

122 - £2.4 million

123 - £3 million

So it's still a speghetti to the wall mix after 2 year of scouting, and this seems to be a trend that will continue. This is the thing though, I'm sure with a more directed approach you could get a bit more out of it, but it seems that at this age there just isn't enough time for the scouts to get them all properly unless you're directly sending the scouts to the club's they're brought in at. Even with 19 of the very best scouts though, that's their pick. Even when negotiating with clubs, they're own opinions of their players is not correlated strongly with their potential (as shown by the Wolfsburg example there). Ultimately though, my scouts best picks in no way suggest that "it's too easy to see future stars" for this age group.

[Namor]

First let me state what should be obvious:

1. The assumption that just because there has been no transfers above 15 million for 15-16 year olds that everybody would sell if such an offer came in is blatantly false.

2. The Odegaard transfer only was as low at it was, as there was no way Odegaard would have extended his contract which would have run out after next season. His club had to cash in now, which severely reduced their leverage.

3. If Odegaard had been playing at Chelsea, Real Madrid could have offered 25 million and he would have stayed put.

4. Very few of the most talented 15-16 year olds actually change club at that age. Essentially it is a prerequisite that their current club does not offer them the chance to continue developing quickly, as was the case with Odegaard. This leads to the situation that if they change clubs their current club usually has little leverage and often not the required financial muscle to refuse a 5 million offer. A team like eg. Anderlecht can offer the developement through Champions League football and a more competitive division as well as being able to pay higher salaries, which allows them to easily refuse a 15 million offer on the assumption that they can convince eg. Youri Tielemans to extend his contract once more to cash in with a transfer when he is 20 years old.

I dislike this thread with a passion, as it puts a feature under scrutiny which does work very well. By ignoring ideas like leverage, or taking the sum of money Odegaard left his club for out of context is lazy.

[Some Guy!]

From what I have seen of it this series is a good example of how scouting and player identification is overpowered and being exploited in the lower leagues to rocket towards the top:

. It's not that relevant in terms of high potential youngsters with high fees as most of the players in the series are unlikely to have huge potential. It does, however show that it is very easy to scout and develop great potential youngster for your current level to help you soar through the leagues and I cannot see how this cannot be extrapolated to bigger clubs and very high potential youngsters.

This is not relevant to the discussion of big clubs wanting high fees for who they rate as their best youngsters.

That's a fine example of a syllogism. Whether you decide to infer something from it that cannot be rationally done is not my fault. I explored what appears to be your issues with it i.e. whether the transfers were being forced be people or facilitated by the game. Regardless it is a sound deduction as from the premises it must be deduced that the game environment is different from reality, although that's not necessarily the games fault. I was merely outlining my reasoning, which starts out with the difference in transfer behaviour in game and in real life and necessarily leads to the realisation that something different is going on in-game. Then I went on to argue what that something is etc.. On another note, It's completely irrelevant whether the AI does these transfers, since it by no means is playing the game optimally.

Again, your "example" missed the equally logical inference.

Please explain to me how that is detrimental to the discussion? Just because I used Genie Scout to quickly find an example refuting the claim that you could negotiate these types of deals into reasonable amounts everything I say is now worthless? You seem to have some irrational problem with third party scouting tools. If the discussed player was found legitimately the point would be the exact same. I have provided plenty of evidence to help estimate the real life market for 15-16 year-olds and found that it seems to be considerably lower than in game. Ultimately a £4m valuation of Luke Shaw as 16 was considered extremely high in the words of The Independent. How is that not an indication of the real life market. Can you provide me with better evidence than existing transfers and negotiations? It'd be interesting to contact the top clubs around the world and hear their opinions, but I'm afraid they'd ignore me.

So now you're taking the papers talk for valuing players. That is an extremely weak argument when we have no basis beyond paper talk to back it. Again, with public offers going in, you can't judge it.

Again I have no issue with people doing what they want with the game, I do have an issue with people using scouting tools then complaining scouting is too easy.

I have dealt with that since the first page. I operate from the assumption that anything has a price and I believe the world around is producing countless examples of that. This is exactly why I am trying to direct this discussion towards an estimation of the real life transfermarket. I also explained that and why I am doing it once before. Based on the research I have done (no doubt fairly limited) I have produced the claim that in real life £15m would be enough to buy any 15-16 year-old. Then I went onto backward chaining (obviously mainly hypothetical) and began with whether big clubs would actually make those bids (£15m) if they had sufficient knowledge of players potential abilities and inferred that they probably would since real life high current ability players are worth much more. From that I concluded that since they don't make such offers they don't have sufficient knowledge i.e. 15-16 year-olds are not worth +£15m in real life. If anyone came in with such a bid the selling club would sell immediately just as any banana plantation would sell instantly if somebody bid $5/kg above the market price. Those cases of just no don't exist. There do exist examples of the buying club not being willing to me a sellings club's valuation, but that valuation is never above £15m.

What you're saying though requires that you reject the equally logical hypothesis that these fees aren't likely because big clubs tell eachother that there is no way the deal is happening. Young players also aren't an equal commodity, but are one that is rarely traded in such a context. Essentially, we're blind on that one in that we can't draw a conclusion one way or the other.

In terms of the "they won't know how good they are", I think at this point it's been shown well enough that in game you really can't tell enough about the youngsters at that age to actually judge which ones are capable of becoming the best, which again comes back to the point of people either cheating to find the high potential players, or being drastically over confident in their scouts.

The scouts are most useful for revealing attributes and personality traits, which they do with 100% accuracy. As far as I can see you're the only one still banging on about black and silver or whatever stars. These only make up a rather small part of the whole picture which goes into pinpointing a future good player, one that's worth a multimillion transfer fee. The label 'very best in the world' is also only used by yourself only. No-one, to my knowledge, is claiming that they can identify all the great players in the game through scouts. The actual argument is that once we spot a player that's going to be good we're very rarely wrong if we know what to look for.

BTW, a 135 PA player with good attribute distribution and great personality has a considerably greater chance of being a great performing player than a 180 PA player with unbalanced attributes and rubbish attitude. I would expect you to know that even though your posts seem to ignore the notion.

So what you're saying is that it isn't about scouts' ability to determine a player's ability and potential, but rather their ability to tell you their personality and give a hint of hidden attributes now? Well, the "overvalued youngster" debate is out of that one then. Not really sure where you're going from that exactly. I don't disagree with you on that point, but that is completely irrelevant to the hypervaluing of players which this thread was about.

[Some Guy!]

First let me state what should be obvious:

1. The assumption that just because there has been no transfers above 15 million for 15-16 year olds that everybody would sell if such an offer came in is blatantly false.

2. The Odegaard transfer only was as low at it was, as there was no way Odegaard would have extended his contract which would have run out after next season. His club had to cash in now, which severely reduced their leverage.

3. If Odegaard had been playing at Chelsea, Real Madrid could have offered 25 million and he would have stayed put.

4. Very few of the most talented 15-16 year olds actually change club at that age. Essentially it is a prerequisite that their current club does not offer them the chance to continue developing quickly, as was the case with Odegaard. This leads to the situation that if they change clubs their current club usually has little leverage and often not the required financial muscle to refuse a 5 million offer. A team like eg. Anderlecht can offer the developement through Champions League football and a more competitive division as well as being able to pay higher salaries, which allows them to easily refuse a 15 million offer on the assumption that they can convince eg. Youri Tielemans to extend his contract once more to cash in with a transfer when he is 20 years old.

I dislike this thread with a passion, as it puts a feature under scrutiny which does work very well. By ignoring ideas like leverage, or taking the sum of money Odegaard left his club for out of context is lazy.

Nicely put. I would again point out that Odegaard costs around £1 million in the game, and that Tielemans costs less than £15 million if I recall right.

[Cavenagh]

First let me state what should be obvious:

1. The assumption that just because there has been no transfers above 15 million for 15-16 year olds that everybody would sell if such an offer came in is blatantly false.

2. The Odegaard transfer only was as low at it was, as there was no way Odegaard would have extended his contract which would have run out after next season. His club had to cash in now, which severely reduced their leverage.

3. If Odegaard had been playing at Chelsea, Real Madrid could have offered 25 million and he would have stayed put.

4. Very few of the most talented 15-16 year olds actually change club at that age. Essentially it is a prerequisite that their current club does not offer them the chance to continue developing quickly, as was the case with Odegaard. This leads to the situation that if they change clubs their current club usually has little leverage and often not the required financial muscle to refuse a 5 million offer. A team like eg. Anderlecht can offer the developement through Champions League football and a more competitive division as well as being able to pay higher salaries, which allows them to easily refuse a 15 million offer on the assumption that they can convince eg. Youri Tielemans to extend his contract once more to cash in with a transfer when he is 20 years old.

I dislike this thread with a passion, as it puts a feature under scrutiny which does work very well. By ignoring ideas like leverage, or taking the sum of money Odegaard left his club for out of context is lazy.

And to add to your fourth point:

It's against FIFA regulations for a player under the age of 18 to be transferred internationally.

It's against FIFA regulations for a player under the age of 16 to be transferred internationally between EU nations.

Most National Associations do not allow domestic transfers of scholarship players.

Youth players that do move do so for personal reasons, and no club or person is allowed to induce them to move.

The reason you don't see 15 million pound transfers for a 15 year old is the same reason you don't see a 100 pound transfer. So 'researching' the market is pretty worthless and a total waste of time.

[YKW]

No, am I not claiming that the absence of evidence is evidence, I am claiming that the absence of any such cases, when the expected result from the game is an absence of any such cases, doesn't provide any evidence that anything in the game is wrong.

A real world case would be a recent case of a transfer of a highly rated youngster (ideally we'd be talking about a 15/16 year old player, as that's what the debate has become), between two big clubs, for a small fee. Big clubs don't let go of their young talents. They sometimes might leave on a free transfer (i.e. Pogba, but he was a bit older), but when we talk about such transfers, it's generally smaller club to bigger club. If the Odegaard transfer is anything to go by (and it's been brought up here time and time again), then the game is actually underestimating (~£1 mil in game, ~£4 mil in real life).

So hold on. The only example of a recent high profile "wonderkid" moving clubs is one where the player cost just £4million, but somehow this doesn't constitute an acceptable argument in favour of my point? The player in question being the youngest debutant in his league, the youngest scorer in his league, and also the youngest ever player for his national team. Not to mention that he is joining the richest club in the world, so surely the standard FM premium should apply. I'm not sure the point about his price in this years FM is a strong one considering we know that he will have a higher PA in the next game. I am happy not to bring Odegaard onto my side of the debate as I am not that keen on real life examples overall, as there will always be exceptions.

That is a baseless personal insult. It has no place in a calm reasoned discussion. If you feel I lack an understanding of economics, please explain in terms of economic principles where you feel I'm wrong, rather than just using it as an insult.

Value, and and all of it's related terms. In your opinion, what is determining how much a user will be willing to pay for a player, and why do you think this is almost always higher than the amount a real life club would be willing to be pay? This is the entirety of my point. By any standard of assessing the value of a player, the result is the same: the values of players in the game will be much more elastic to the known attributes of the player in comparison to real life. Learning that a player is "consistent" or "inconsistent" can turn a player from a must buy to a must not buy, in the eyes of the user. In real life this information would be harder to know, and with less certainty, so therefore the value will almost always be higher or lower than real life. This can be demonstrated by imagining you have two identical 15 year old players, differing only in that one is injury prone and one rarely succumbs to injury. In the game I can scout them and discover their injury status, instantly giving me a clear logical decision on which represents the best value. In real life I wouldn't have such clear information about this, and so I would value the players almost identically.

It is very simple therefore to understand why the £20 million figure is more acceptable to an FM player than a real life club. The FM player has more information, and perhaps even more reliable information, with which to make his value based judgement.

At no point did I say that it was realistic for a 15 year old to go for £15 million (though we do have a real world case of an equivalent level transfer of a 16 year old, Theo Walcott, who in current terms would be around £16/17 million), but rather that it's completely reasonable that clubs in a strong financial position, with absolutely no reason to sell, and the statute to keep the best, will outright reject such bids, and any that they'd consider would be well beyond reasonable.

I've quoted this exchange:

no team in the world wouldn't sell any 15 year old for +£15 mill.

Likewise very few teams, if any, would spend £15m+ on a schoolboy.

Both are correct and in my opinion show that there is a lack of realism both in offering the £15 million and in rejecting the £15 million. You replied by saying that the unrealism is wholly on the part of the user. Why is it unrealistic for a user to bid £15 million and not unrealistic for the AI to reject it? This is what I'm asking you. Every situation is it's own, but generally speaking, both are unrealistic.

A "group that will develop positively" and "the very best in the world" are two entirely different things. The focus here is whether the scouts will actually be able to identify the very best young players at that age group, hence making it too easy to find it. If you really want I could strike out the ones with unfavourable characteristics, but that's essentially doing nothing for the experiment, as 135 PA player with a good attitude is still a 135 PA player with a good attitude. The claim being tested was people stating that they could find the best players in the world at 15/16 through their scouts, and they were "too accurate", and meaning that it "forces" the player to go for these players they're demanding such ridiculous prices for.

Well I think there is a limitation to your experiment here, as the way you are doing it is mirroring a player who would simply sign the players with the highest star ratings alone. Along with the claim that you identify, I and others have also made the claim that it is factors such as attribute distribution, determination, personality, injury proneness, and consistency that along with the star ratings allow the user to operate the transfer market with an unrealistic degree of certainty. Äktsjon Männ claims he can do this without a scout report even, although I would like to see the test. Regardless, you aren't emulating the behaviour of a human player correctly, so you won't get results that show what a human player is capable of.

If you just want to test the accuracy of scouts then that is fine, but that is fairly limited. As a simple extra suggestion you could scout the players in question for long enough to get to them to point of no black stars, and compare them then also.

Don't my occasional belligerence overshadow the fact that I really appreciate the time you are taking to do your tests and post the results. I would always encourage that because the results are always interesting and I love reading them, thanks

[Some Guy!]

And to add to your fourth point:

It's against FIFA regulations for a player under the age of 18 to be transferred internationally.

It's against FIFA regulations for a player under the age of 16 to be transferred internationally between EU nations.

Most National Associations do not allow domestic transfers of scholarship players.

Youth players that do move do so for personal reasons, and no club or person is allowed to induce them to move.

The reason you don't see 15 million pound transfers for a 15 year old is the same reason you don't see a 100 pound transfer. So 'researching' the market is pretty worthless and a total waste of time.

We were talking about the age group 15/16 years still, and in FM '15/16' may as well be the same (as signing an U16 player will go through when they turn 16 if they're in the EU). The key point to be gotten from this thread though is that the scouting isn't as accurate at reading a players' potential as to justify a human player spending megabucks on a player that young. Whether or not scouting is too effective for lower league managers looking for the right mental attributes, that's an entirely different discussion. But it does appear to be pretty clear that even with best case scouting, the scouts aren't going to know enough about players that age to give a human reason to justify spending those megabucks on young players, hence the asking prices acting as a deterrence as they are meant to.

Whether big clubs should accept lower prices for their youngsters if the cheaters wanna cheat (i.e. players using scouting tools, complaining because they know Joe Bloggs has 200 PA, but Bayern want £70 million for him) is another question all together. We simply don't know enough about such transfers as they simply don't happen.

[Äktsjon Männ]

So what you're saying is that it isn't about scouts' ability to determine a player's ability and potential, but rather their ability to tell you their personality and give a hint of hidden attributes now? Well, the "overvalued youngster" debate is out of that one then. Not really sure where you're going from that exactly. I don't disagree with you on that point, but that is completely irrelevant to the hypervaluing of players which this thread was about.

It's never been about scouts' estimate of PA in isolation. You're the only one taking the discussion there. The argument is that we as human players can take their estimation along with all the other info they reveal (or what a trial reveals) and make an accurate guess about the first team potential of a 16 year old player. Once you're well trained in the exercise then the realism argument goes out the window, because whilst it's not reasonable to spend big money on teenagers with no first team experience in reality, in FM there is a certainty about young players that makes it no more of a gamble than signing an established player who is just as likely to break his leg the next day. Which is the single biggest risk associated with any transfer in FM.

The other argument, which is part of the above but has even less to do with any scouting experiments is that every player has a value and the 'not for sale' label which people argue the ridiculous asking prices stand for doesn't exist for players with no experience at the senior level. The realism aspect is already defeated by something as elemental in any management game as giving the manager full control over negotiating the transfer fees. This is necessary because it's part of the essence of this game despite not being realistic at all. There are many things in FM where a compromise like this is unavoidable. By all means, argue that the pricing of 15-16 year olds is one of them and the way the scouts operate is necessary for the game to be enjoyable but stop with the parallels to reality which you cannot support with actual examples.

[Some Guy!]

So hold on. The only example of a recent high profile "wonderkid" moving clubs is one where the player cost just £4million, but somehow this doesn't constitute an acceptable argument in favour of my point? The player in question being the youngest debutant in his league, the youngest scorer in his league, and also the youngest ever player for his national team. Not to mention that he is joining the richest club in the world, so surely the standard FM premium should apply. I'm not sure the point about his price in this years FM is a strong one considering we know that he will have a higher PA in the next game. I am happy not to bring Odegaard onto my side of the debate as I am not that keen on real life examples overall, as there will always be exceptions.

So hold on. The only example you're willing to give with a recent high profile wonderkid moving clubs is where he cost 4 times what he cost in FM, and we're discussing him as an example in a thread about hyper valuing youngsters? How has that missed step in logic not sunk in yet?

The discussion is not about Stromsgodset rejecting megabucks for young players in the game, as they simply wouldn't, in fact, if anything what the Odegaard transfer showed is that in game they were a little too willing to let him go cheap. What the discussion is about though is top young talents moving between big clubs when they turn, or while they are 16, and the prices involved in the game. The Odegaard transfer is complete irrelevant to that point as he didn't move between two big European clubs, he moved from a smaller one to a bigger one, at a price above what the game thought he would.

As for "he'll have a higher PA in the next game". Who knows, we'll see what the researches come up with. But try for yourself. Make Odegaard a 200 PA player with the editor and watch what happens with him.

Value, and and all of it's related terms. In your opinion, what is determining how much a user will be willing to pay for a player, and why do you think this is almost always higher than the amount a real life club would be willing to be pay? This is the entirety of my point. By any standard of assessing the value of a player, the result is the same: the values of players in the game will be much more elastic to the known attributes of the player in comparison to real life. Learning that a player is "consistent" or "inconsistent" can turn a player from a must buy to a must not buy, in the eyes of the user. In real life this information would be harder to know, and with less certainty, so therefore the value will almost always be higher or lower than real life. This can be demonstrated by imagining you have two identical 15 year old players, differing only in that one is injury prone and one rarely succumbs to injury. In the game I can scout them and discover their injury status, instantly giving me a clear logical decision on which represents the best value. In real life I wouldn't have such clear information about this, and so I would value the players almost identically.

It is very simple therefore to understand why the £20 million figure is more acceptable to an FM player than a real life club. The FM player has more information, and perhaps even more reliable information, with which to make his value based judgement.

You see, this is getting into a debate about the nature of scouting for any player, not the nature of scouting in uncovering high potential players, which are far more likely to have large price tags attached to them. This is heading onto a massive tangent from the original discussion.

I've quoted this exchange:

Both are correct and in my opinion show that there is a lack of realism both in offering the £15 million and in rejecting the £15 million. You replied by saying that the unrealism is wholly on the part of the user. Why is it unrealistic for a user to bid £15 million and not unrealistic for the AI to reject it? This is what I'm asking you. Every situation is it's own, but generally speaking, both are unrealistic.

How do you quantify the amount a club would be willing to accept. Arsenal were willing to pay what is now the equivalent of more than £17 million for Walcott. If he were already at the club, they'd not have accepted that much for him. The question becomes how do you quantify what is a realistic amount if these sorts of transfers (from a big club who have high hopes for the player) simply don't happen? The game's chosen solution at this point is to have fees set to be a deterrence, but the player can choose to smash them if they really want the player, this seems a reasonable solution when there is no data to draw a conclusion on how much they would accept.

Well I think there is a limitation to your experiment here, as the way you are doing it is mirroring a player who would simply sign the players with the highest star ratings alone. Along with the claim that you identify, I and others have also made the claim that it is factors such as attribute distribution, determination, personality, injury proneness, and consistency that along with the star ratings allow the user to operate the transfer market with an unrealistic degree of certainty. Äktsjon Männ claims he can do this without a scout report even, although I would like to see the test. Regardless, you aren't emulating the behaviour of a human player correctly, so you won't get results that show what a human player is capable of.

If you just want to test the accuracy of scouts then that is fine, but that is fairly limited. As a simple extra suggestion you could scout the players in question for long enough to get to them to point of no black stars, and compare them then also.

Don't my occasional belligerence overshadow the fact that I really appreciate the time you are taking to do your tests and post the results. I would always encourage that because the results are always interesting and I love reading them, thanks

I scout with attribute distribution, a keen eye on personality and tracking how much clubs want for players, most of the time over the course of years, i.e. I watched about young strikers in German, and the shortlist ultimately became 1 when one performed better than the rest, was already capable of first team football for me, and became available at a price I was willing to pay. That's how most experienced FM players would play. The point is though, that the younger you go after a player (and we're talking ridiculously young at 16), the more likely they'll have a low potential, hence making it so you'll have an extremely ambitious, professional, consistent, injury free League One player. As was demonstrated, the stars for determining potential (the only purpose of the experiment) showed that at that age there really is no certainty at all, even with the addition of how the club valued the player.

It's also worth noting that for 16 year old players you cannot get to the point of having no black star. Even at your own club they'll have black stars, and they'll remain until they're surprisingly old (into their 20s in many cases). All players noted in those lists were fully scouted. The simple point is that players at 16 in the game really are near impossible to figure out of the potential of.

[Some Guy!]

It's never been about scouts' estimate of PA in isolation. You're the only one taking the discussion there. The argument is that we as human players can take their estimation along with all the other info they reveal (or what a trial reveals) and make an accurate guess about the first team potential of a 16 year old player. Once you're well trained in the exercise then the realism argument goes out the window, because whilst it's not reasonable to spend big money on teenagers with no first team experience in reality, in FM there is a certainty about young players that makes it no more of a gamble than signing an established player who is just as likely to break his leg the next day. Which is the single biggest risk associated with any transfer in FM.

Been playing FM for damn near a decade at this point, I'm well trained in scouting, signing and training players. The simple point though is that in this version you're not going to know enough about a 16 year old, and in particular their potential (which is the factor that can kneecap an otherwise brilliant young player of that age group) to ever bidding that much on them unless they are something truly special (i.e. already world class at that age, I have actually seen a 15 year old world class leftback, who has since not improved in the slightest), and even then it can still be a risk depending on the price involved.

You keep saying certainty, when it's been demonstrated that at least for potential, there is none at all for that age group. For the most part you can't tell a 130 PA (or in that one example, a ~110 PA player) from a 200 PA player at that age group, and no matter how good the personality attributes and consistency and such, you're not overcoming such a risk. As said before, from the scouts reading of their personality and so forth, you can be certain that you could get a very professional, ambitious, consistent, injury free player, but that counts for nothing if you spent £20 million on a professional, ambitious, consistent, injury free League One potential player.

The other argument, which is part of the above but has even less to do with any scouting experiments is that every player has a value and the 'not for sale' label which people argue the ridiculous asking prices stand for doesn't exist for players with no experience at the senior level. The realism aspect is already defeated by something as elemental in any management game as giving the manager full control over negotiating the transfer fees. This is necessary because it's part of the essence of this game despite not being realistic at all. There are many things in FM where a compromise like this is unavoidable. By all means, argue that the pricing of 15-16 year olds is one of them and the way the scouts operate is necessary for the game to be enjoyable but stop with the parallels to reality which you cannot support with actual examples.

You equally cannot support you statement that the prices are unrealistic with examples.

[HUNT3R]

Been playing FM for damn near a decade at this point, I'm well trained in scouting, signing and training players. The simple point though is that in this version you're not going to know enough about a 16 year old, and in particular their potential (which is the factor that can kneecap an otherwise brilliant young player of that age group) to ever bidding that much on them unless they are something truly special (i.e. already world class at that age, I have actually seen a 15 year old world class leftback, who has since not improved in the slightest), and even then it can still be a risk depending on the price involved.

You keep saying certainty, when it's been demonstrated that at least for potential, there is none at all for that age group. For the most part you can't tell a 130 PA (or in that one example, a ~110 PA player) from a 200 PA player at that age group, and no matter how good the personality attributes and consistency and such, you're not overcoming such a risk. As said before, from the scouts reading of their personality and so forth, you can be certain that you could get a very professional, ambitious, consistent, injury free player, but that counts for nothing if you spent £20 million on a professional, ambitious, consistent, injury free League One potential player.

I'm interested as two posters have now asked the same question. Disregard the fact that you looked under the hood to find out their PA, for a moment.

Who would you sign (and possibly - why?), using the information the game provides such as scout reports, attributes and transfer fee? I'm interested to see if you'd be able to pick out the really good (high PA) players in that list. If it's too difficult to do with the first two seasons (since you've already peeked) could you do it for season 3, if you are continuing with the test?

[Äktsjon Männ]

Been playing FM for damn near a decade at this point, I'm well trained in scouting, signing and training players. The simple point though is that in this version you're not going to know enough about a 16 year old, and in particular their potential (which is the factor that can kneecap an otherwise brilliant young player of that age group) to ever bidding that much on them unless they are something truly special (i.e. already world class at that age, I have actually seen a 15 year old world class leftback, who has since not improved in the slightest), and even then it can still be a risk depending on the price involved.

You keep saying certainty, when it's been demonstrated that at least for potential, there is none at all for that age group. For the most part you can't tell a 130 PA (or in that one example, a ~110 PA player) from a 200 PA player at that age group, and no matter how good the personality attributes and consistency and such, you're not overcoming such a risk. As said before, from the scouts reading of their personality and so forth, you can be certain that you could get a very professional, ambitious, consistent, injury free player, but that counts for nothing if you spent £20 million on a professional, ambitious, consistent, injury free League One potential player.

You've demonstrated nothing of the sort. What you've shown is that the results of the first superficial scouting process don't directly correlate to PA which everybody already knew. Even then there are already clear patterns you can draw from the combination of the selling club, the asking price and the scouts estimation. If you take that information and expand on it you'll quickly filter out what's what.

You equally cannot support you statement that the prices are unrealistic with examples.

There's no way I could. If there were examples of high asking prices then I would be wrong. The fact that there aren't any can't be used in support of your viewpoint no matter how hard you argue.

[Some Guy!]

I'm interested as two posters have now asked the same question. Disregard the fact that you looked under the hood to find out their PA, for a moment.

Who would you sign (and possibly - why?), using the information the game provides such as scout reports, attributes and transfer fee? I'm interested to see if you'd be able to pick out the really good (high PA) players in that list. If it's too difficult to do with the first two seasons (since you've already peeked) could you do it for season 3, if you are continuing with the test?

I really didn't have that good of a look at them, I literally just ran through the list.

Looking over them now. I don't like the look of the Monaco defender as he can't head, and has quite low concentration and decisions. One of them's a winger with 1 for finishing, inconsistent and poor decision making. The one at Koln is inconsistent and selfish. At that age though I tend to just watch and wait. The one at Hertha looks alright in terms of attribute balance, is a model professional, consistent and is a real flair player, but is unambitious.

Just looking at them I couldn't tell you which ones would have high PA though. I might put together a set of images of the players and see how people do guessing. Might be interesting to put people to the test with the information available.

[Some Guy!]

You've demonstrated nothing of the sort. What you've shown is that the results of the first superficial scouting process don't directly correlate to PA which everybody already knew. Even then there are already clear patterns you can draw from the combination of the selling club, the asking price and the scouts estimation. If you take that information and expand on it you'll quickly filter out what's what.

There's no way I could. If there were examples of high asking prices then I would be wrong. The fact that there aren't any can't be used in support of your viewpoint no matter how hard you argue.

It's been claimed in this thread that PA is too easy to figure out.

I would argue it's been shown as well that the selling club's price is a not a good measure of a player's ability either.

Again, equally the lack of any examples cannot be used to support you either though.

Anyhow, how about a challenge then. I will give the age, club that a player is at, position, their attribute screen, scouting screen and the history (appearances and such) screen for 10 players, I want you (and anyone else who wants to) to rate them. I will also present their initial negotiation as well as what they'll accept for the player. A fun game to try. I'll then post the under the key under the hood values of the players. Basically, a way of seeing how good you (and others) are at figuring out player potential at that age from the information provided, as HUNT3R suggested.

[HUNT3R]

I really didn't have that good of a look at them, I literally just ran through the list.

Looking over them now. I don't like the look of the Monaco defender as he can't head, and has quite low concentration and decisions. One of them's a winger with 1 for finishing, inconsistent and poor decision making. The one at Koln is inconsistent and selfish. At that age though I tend to just watch and wait. The one at Hertha looks alright in terms of attribute balance, is a model professional, consistent and is a real flair player, but is unambitious.

Just looking at them I couldn't tell you which ones would have high PA though. I might put together a set of images of the players and see how people do guessing. Might be interesting to put people to the test with the information available.

It'd be interesting to me, since recent posts were along the lines of humans willing to spend a lot of money on youngsters simply because they know the youngster will be worth it - a superstar. From what you're saying, the black star system is making this more difficult.

[Some Guy!]

Well, I'll stick 4 up to start with, then I need to go for a day, but I should be able to do more later:

Name: Youssou Diallo

Club: Auxerre

Attributes: Here

Scout Screen: Here

First Negotiation: £12.5 million

Will Accept: £6.5 million

Name: Pierre Bong

Club: Nantes

Attributes: Here

Scout Screen: Here

First Negotiation: £16.25 million

Will Accept: £8.25 million

Name: Moussa Ouattara

Club: Furth

Attributes: Here

Scout Screen: Here

First Negotiation: £7.25 million

Will Accept: £3.6 million

Name: Jeremy Scherrer

Club: Sochaux

Attributes: Here

Scout Screen: Here

First Negotiation: £9.5 million

Will Accept: £5 million

The information on the scouting screen that is cut off is things like "extremely interested to join the club", "could become a good player for such and such a position", "they would accept such and such a bid etc.". No consequential data has been excluded there.

These were from a few more months of scouting. I won't be able to make any more today, but I might look into a better method for doing these if they're actually something interesting.

[YKW]

Some Guy!, would it be possible for you to include the positional abilities screen of the player, such that we can see his detailed footedness and preferred moves?

In addition to this, are all of the reports by the same scout and from a similar date? It would be useful to batch scout a group of players for this game with one scout to keep these variables the same. If you haven't already of course!

I will happily play along with this, from the perspective of which of the players you list I would be most and least interested in signing. I haven't been exposed to any CA or PA figures while playing FM15 so I won't be trying to guess these exactly. Others may feel they can though.

How can we judge my "correctness?"

I will happily concede to you on your preferred issue of the certainty of the PA figure if I can't even get close, and the majority of others don't either.

The other element to this discussion would relate to whether we can choose the best players with hindsight, i.e. we may have missed out on a 180PA player, however this player is equal in CA to a fully developed 160PA player, who we preferred on the basis of our speculation about his development rate.

To achieve this we could decide on our shortlist of players and you could transfer them to your united squad in exchange for other youth players, and then simulate the game 10 years and see how our choices look in that context. If we were to have made consistently decent choices, then would you be willing to concede my separate point to yours, in essence regarding the unrealistically low level of risk in signing young players?

In all seriousness this could make a great game, we could play it like a kind of stock market where you post screens of young players and we each decide which we want shares in, then we see who did the best and repeat. For this particular experiment they should probably all be at the same club though.

EDIT: I also think that my earlier suggestion of the players to be guessed being picked in some random way or by a neutral third party would be good. Also the CA/PA figures should be PM'd to someone when the players go up. Don't take this personally Some Guy!, I was suggesting these measures when you weren't even involved

[Cougar2010]

In all seriousness this could make a great game, we could play it like a kind of stock market where you post screens of young players and we each decide which we want shares in, then we see who did the best and repeat. For this particular experiment they should probably all be at the same club though.

I agree, could be a lot of fun.

Personally speaking I wouldn't be that interested in any of those four for my team though