[Suggestion] Improved stats on youth players

[TheGhanaBoy]

I've come to realize that youth players potential and current ability stats don't actually match their real life ability especially when it comes to clubs with top training facilities which sucks when you're trying to develop home grown players. For examples I play with Man City and although our academy is one of the best in the world, especially player wise, it doesn't reflect in the game. Also I think regens are sometimes too overpowered. Something that should also be looked at. 

[TheGhanaBoy]

Also regen positions don't always make sense. Like sometimes you'll have a striker who can also play central midfield so that should be looked at as well

 

[maccataq]

I think that the potential of players compared to real life are pretty good plus they tweak them each year based on real life development. Once in game, it's down to a number of factors that influences how good they become. I think often FM players develop better than they do in real life rather than the other way around (although it does happen both ways) simply because there are so many things that can influence how a player develops. Look at someone like Adnan Januzaj for example, in FM15 he was phenomenal but clearly things haven't worked out that way in real life, not because of his technical ability but because of his attitude so I think he now has lower mental attributes.

On your other point, I don't think the positions are too inaccurate, there are plenty of examples of footballers that can play multiple positions (Rooney is a striker that can play CM) and at youth level, they often change their position. For example, Michael Carrick was a striker when he was young but he ended up as a midfielder simply because he wasn't the quickest and the position no longer suited him. I do agree that it's not always perfect but it's not as if you get left wingers than can also play CB or a CM that can play in goal! I think where regens are a bit flawed is that you get CBs and GK that are really small or 6"6 wingers!

 

[ClemB]

Players in U19 are always rubish (not talking about regens). It seems SI doesn't want to take any risk nowadays in rating youth players. There are a very few wonderkid, who are most of the time outclassed by the regens after the first season.

[westy8chimp]

2 hours ago, ClemB said:

Players in U19 are always rubish (not talking about regens). It seems SI doesn't want to take any risk nowadays in rating youth players. There are a very few wonderkid, who are most of the time outclassed by the regens after the first season.

Agree. Been several editions of FM since I last put any effort into developing real life youths. I now just stick to known players and await the Regens for development. They tend to get exponentially better too... so I don't even bother with Regens until season 5 or so...then they start pumping them out with high enough stats to have a first team of 16 year olds.

[enigmatic]

The last player Manchester City's academy produced who played a significant number of games for the club was Daniel Sturridge, 10 years ago. Why would you expect the current generation of youth players to be substantially better than that?

(you can get serviceable Premiership players out of the likes of Adarabioyo anyway)

[westy8chimp]

6 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

The last player Manchester City's academy produced who played a significant number of games for the club was Daniel Sturridge, 10 years ago. Why would you expect the current generation of youth players to be substantially better than that?

(you can get serviceable Premiership players out of the likes of Adarabioyo anyway)

I think it's more a case that someone like Foden is currently 5 star potential in a new save (most of the time) but you can train him for 5 years and he will not be amazing. In season 10 you can buy a 16 year old regen who has 5 star potential... and by the time they are 18 they are an easy first team pick with 15+ in a number of attributes.

 

 

[enigmatic]

18 minutes ago, westy8chimp said:

I think it's more a case that someone like Fodden is currently 5 star potential in a new save (most of the time) but you can train him for 5 years and he will not be amazing. In season 10 you can buy a 16 year old regen who has 5 star potential... and by the time they are 18 they are an easy first team pick with 15+ in a number of attributes.

Foden's perfectly good enough to become a Premiership player, possibly even one of the best Premiership players and his personality is just as random as any regen's. 

But unlike Mbappe and the regen equivalent of Mbappe he doesn't start the game nearly good enough to play first team games or have the potential to be as good as Neymar, and so getting him to Premiership standard isn't something that's going to happen easily and irrespective of player actions.

In what possible sense could you argue that this is wrong, even with the benefit of sufficient hindsight to see that Foden's developed pretty well over the last season?

[westy8chimp]

21 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

In what possible sense could you argue that this is wrong, even with the benefit of sufficient hindsight to see that Foden's developed pretty well over the last season?

Take the player out of it though... any 5 star potential u18 when you start a new save... in my mind ... is harder to train to a world class standard ... than any regen 5 star rated player from about season 8 onwards.

Ties in with other threads about regens having high physical stats etc.

Hence my comment I don't really bother with any u18s that start the game..if I'm doing a City save I just use known players already of top quality and forget the likes of Foden. But from season 10 I could conceivably (and think have had) an entire squad of u21 worldies winning me all trophies. Think in my last City save I had a batch of German kids all with 20s in pace, strength plus 15+ in the key attributes for their position.

Simply cant seem to do that with a real world u18 who is highly rated. (Alex Isaak the exception which proves the rule)

[enigmatic]

Since "5 star" is a pretty huge AI guesstimate range varying from club to club which (i) is biased towards players with a high starting ability, particularly with players new to or not at the club and (ii) has a threshold which rises over time if you keep winning stuff and (iii) your youth intakes get better if you win stuff and chuck money at them it's not exactly a massive shock the "five star" players you scout and choose to sign and standout players in your youth intake tend to do better than real life very borderline  "five star" players with potential ranges set by researchers who have watched them and decided they probably won't be world beaters.

The bias towards physical attributes in regens is there, but something of a moot point (it's a pretty rubbish thing if you want ball playing defenders, for example). And academies do produce a few more players of standout potential than clubs' track records suggest they deserve, but that's almost certainly intentional too

[westy8chimp]

37 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Since "5 star" is a pretty huge AI guesstimate range varying from club to club which (i) is biased towards players with a high starting ability, particularly with players new to or not at the club and (ii) has a threshold which rises over time if you keep winning stuff and (iii) your youth intakes get better if you win stuff and chuck money at them it's not exactly a massive shock the "five star" players you scout and choose to sign and standout players in your youth intake tend to do better than real life very borderline  "five star" players with potential ranges set by researchers who have watched them and decided they probably won't be world beaters.

Good point well made. Game, set & match on this one.

[TheGhanaBoy]

On 9/14/2017 at 07:47, enigmatic said:

The last player Manchester City's academy produced who played a significant number of games for the club was Daniel Sturridge, 10 years ago. Why would you expect the current generation of youth players to be substantially better than that?

(you can get serviceable Premiership players out of the likes of Adarabioyo anyway)

It's not about their first team involvement, it's about their quality that should be acknowledged by FM that's all I'm saying 

[enigmatic]

Just now, TheGhanaBoy said:

It's not about their first team involvement, it's about their quality that should be acknowledged by FM that's all I'm saying 

Their quality has seen most of its best players in the past ten years end up in the lower divisions, and none of them graduate to the first team. I repeat, what reason do you have to believe the quality of the current lot is significantly better?

[TheGhanaBoy]

18 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Their quality has seen most of its best players in the past ten years end up in the lower divisions, and none of them graduate to the first team. I repeat, what reason do you have to believe the quality of the current lot is significantly better?

Their involvement at international level and success at youth level with the club. The only reason for previous players not making it in the first team was the manager's inability to include them in the squad which made their career stagnate and regress but with Pep it's different

[enigmatic]

Youth international football tends to be below League One standard. Youth domestic football is significantly lower than that, and success at youth level is often based more around who has the most physically mature talents and who promotes or loans the fewest players rather than depth of talent pool. Few City products have made it any further than that, and none have looked anything special (have any beyond Guidetti and Ben Mee actually ended up in top divisions?).

So that's not really evidence of anything other than the Man City researcher accurately representing the fact that - as with most academies - most of the sides' young players aren't going to be particularly good, and few of the ones that actually are good will make it at Man City level.

The beauty of a data editor is that if you prefer to rate your players based on optimism rather than evidence, you can do.

[BruceyNTFC]

Alex Henshall, a former Man City Academy player, who played for England at youth level, helping them to the 2011 European U17 semis, and was described by the City academy staff as a 'real talent,'  just signed for Nuneaton. I'm his researcher now & he's a very good National League North player. 

Point being, in case anyone didn't get it, many youngsters for a host of reasons can peak to young or plateau at some point. City haven't produced a world class player from their set up yet, and for all their promise, they've still to make that step. They have the infrastructure in place, and they will no doubt see some results, but the OP is jumping the gun a little.

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.