what is really best in this situation, to loan or not to loan?

[Davey Boy]

Most say it's best to develop a player at your own club until he is 18 years old to get certain attributes higher and (assuming you have very good youth training facilities) and then loan him out at 18 to get first team football, however! even though he might well get first team football and competitive football and a much lower league, is there a case even a small case for keeping him in the under 18's or under 23's and playing him there to develop with the great or better facilities you have and also with perhaps the occasional league cup game?

[FrazT]

It is a balancing act to get this type of decision correct.  I rarely loan out any under 18s until they get home grown status and once they get to reserve standard will only loan them out to 1 league below and with the promise of guaranteed first team football and that outweighs any possible downside to using poorer facilities and coaching. I do also keep a lot of my better reserves at the club to take advantage of the staff and facilities.

[HUNT3R]

It isn't a straightforward always yes or always no situation. This is something you need to decide as manager. As Fraz said, sometimes you can put (rightly so) a high value on a player being home grown, though it depends on the league rules etc.

At a certain point, the player needs first team football and it to be at least semi-regular instead of a couple of matches a season. Even your coach reports could indicate when they believe a player really needs those first team matches to really improve more.

I have a 17yo out on loan who is improving a lot. He's at a club playing one division lower and with "adequate" training facilities. I loaned him out because a) I have a few other youngsters competing for the same position, but they are currently better so will be picked ahead of him and b) I only need home grown status for the country. In my case, it just made sense to loan him out. I also didn't need to have him at the club to mold him into what I want as he has all the basics in place already; he has no specific weakness that I needed to work on.

The other youngsters at the club ahead of him, I give cup matches to and time off the bench or times when I need to rotate a lot or need them because of injuries. A couple even broke into the first team and are keeping the regulars out of the team.

I use the Notes feature to keep tabs on who is progressing well and who should be, but isn't. Since we cannot see PA, I try and use this method to 'promote' those improving well, either by sending them on loan to get regular matches or by giving them a run in the team (even if it's off the bench and maybe 1 start) just to see how they do on and off the pitch.

Training facilities are great especially for youngsters, but at a point, first team matches are going to be needed for a player to really kick on.

Btw, it's worth mentioning that the training facilities are still useful for all players and first team matches are also useful for all players. 18 was mentioned as a general idea of when one becomes more important than the other, but that doesn't mean it has no importance before/after that. Keep an eye on how players are progressing and the coach reports.

[Jervaj]

I have a related question relating this balance. Can match experience replace training? 

Here Im not talking about quality of facilities or coaches. Its about time dedicated to one or the other. As in, does match experience continue scaling the more higher quality they get? Or is more important to achieve just a certain threshold and rather train more from there?

With a top team that is up in all competitions you barelly have any "easy" weeks. In "rest" weeks most of your team is playing international matches and from the reminder 90% of the weeks will see you have 2 matche sa week. 3 matches a week can even be more common that 1 one match weeks. This means though that theres is very little training compared to other teams. Its basically rest, recovery and match prep as anything else would strain the squad. 

In such a scenario, would you rather have your promising 18 yo in your first team an enjoy the fact that the congested schedule wil mean he can still easilly get 20+ matches at "top" (he will be likely be lined up in the easiest ones) level or rather play him in a B team/loaned out on a lower team where he will be able to still play simlarly but train much more?

 

What about having the youngster be in the youth/B team and train with them but bring him in to play in your first team matches when neccesary? It means no mentoring/squad influence, but could it be better development wise? Technically he could play as much as in the first team as if he was there but train much more at the same time. Specially true specially for positions like GK where condition is never an issue and he could still play most of the lower team amtches at the same time.

[HUNT3R]

28 minutes ago, Jervaj said:

What about having the youngster be in the youth/B team and train with them but bring him in to play in your first team matches when neccesary?

This is generally not a good idea, if he's going to be involved in matches fairly often. The other squads have training schedules suited to their own match schedule, so you would likely have the issue of your youngster being available for training, but as it's a match day for the B/youth team, they don't train. You could have situations where he barely trains at all with the conflicting schedules. Always something to be aware of, especially if match days are on different days compared to the first team.

[HUNT3R]

This should be helpful regarding the topic. Read from this post onward:

Match time is beneficial, but it ideally should be at an appropriate level too.

[Jervaj]

18 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

This is generally not a good idea, if he's going to be involved in matches fairly often. The other squads have training schedules suited to their own match schedule, so you would likely have the issue of your youngster being available for training, but as it's a match day for the B/youth team, they don't train. You could have situations where he barely trains at all with the conflicting schedules. Always something to be aware of, especially if match days are on different days compared to the first team.

I was aware of this point. Thing is here we are talking that main team with its schedule its only really "training" 2-3 days a week. And all that training is mostly very light days of match prep because it can't afford much more without sacrificing performance/player form due to the congestion.

 

The thing is that playing "fairly often" with the main team tends to be in the best case scenario 1 match a week. Often less. So, weeks he doesnt play with main team, he gets full 1 match week training. If he plays with the main team but match days meet (not uncommon) he is not really losing any training and would again train with a full 1 match a week schedule. Even if the match days don't meet he is potentially not losing anything if the lower team plays on the "rest day" of the main team. And even if it matches a training day he would still be training 4 days, which is always at least one more than the main team, and without having in account that most of those days would be a more compelte training instead of just very light/match prep ones.

 

Now, I would rather prefer that having them in the main team continuosly and just letting them play with the lower team some times is the best option as it simpler to manage and keep track of, plus allow to better mentor them. But I think the concern about if its the best idea when facing congested schedules its sensible to bring up.

 

34 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

This should be helpful regarding the topic. Read from this post onward:

Match time is beneficial, but it ideally should be at an appropriate level too.

Thanks for the link. Based on what Seb says, if its mostly a rating thing I shouldn't be worried. I never play people that perform that badly consistently with the main team. So when discussing the aforementioned cocnern, assume the player is going to average at least in the high end of 6.X.