Improving how youth intakes are displayed

[CFuller]

Youth intake day seems to bring a lot of unnecessary disappointment for many FMers - particularly those who manage big clubs. So often, I've seen FMers turn their noses up at decent-looking intakes because their best player is only 3.5* PA, and refuse to sign anyone who has less than 3* PA. At a top club, you could easily be dismissing talents with Premier League potential just because they don't look all that great immediately.

Personally, I'm not someone who judges an entire youth intake purely on what I see on intake day. For me, it's a bit like trying to write a review for a three-hour movie after you have watched only the first two minutes of it.

There are a few issues here - some with how FMers perceive their youth intakes, and how the game displays them. On the one hand, FMers need to temper their expectations (in terms of how many top talents emerge in top youth teams every season). They also need to understand that star ratings are dynamic - and that they should not be taken as gospel.

On the other hand, SI aren't doing them any favours with how youth intakes are displayed on FM. Users are often given contradictory information in the youth intake preview, and the colour schemes and star ratings can make intakes look far less promising than they actually are.

So I've got a few suggestions on how you can make this better. Firstly...

 

Get rid of the youth intake preview screen

It was a neat addition a few years ago, but now it just feels kind of pointless and unhelpful. Based on all the intakes I've had on FM22 (and to a lesser extent on FM23), there doesn't seem to be a correlation between the initial star rating in the intake preview and the subsequent star rating of the actual intake. In terms of the positional ratings, you can reliably tell which positions your better prospects play in, but the grades aren't accurate at telling you how good those prospects actually are.

With that in mind, I would either overhaul the intake preview (so it gives you a better idea of what to expect)... or remove it from the game completely (i.e. go back to just waiting until the intake comes through in March or whenever).

 

Remove the "golden generation" tag for youth intakes

Sometimes, an excellent youth intake (or intake preview) will be given a 5* rating, with your HoYD saying it "has the potential to be a real golden generation for the club". This can lead some FMers to go overboard and assume that it IS a golden generation... but that's not the point.

The thing is, you don't hear about 'golden generations' in terms of a single age group of 15/16-year-olds who might be good. The 'golden generation' tag is usually given to a young group of players (often from several age groups) who break into the first-team squad at one club at around the same time. At international level, we think of Portugal's youth world champions of the late 80s and early 90s, or the Belgium team from around 2012-2022.

Take the Class of '92 at Manchester United. They didn't come from a single age group - Ryan Giggs was born in 1973, Paul Scholes in '74, David Beckham and Gary Neville in '75, and Phil Neville in '77. Giggs came on the scene first in 1991, and many of those players won the FA Youth Cup in 1992 (Phil Neville was too young), but I'm pretty sure this 'golden generation' talk didn't actually start until they had broken/were breaking into the United first-team in the mid-1990s.

In FM, I would remove the "golden generation" description from youth intakes - and only apply the tag when several young players break into the first-team with the same club at around the same time (and enjoy some form of success).

 

Change the colours assigned to star rating groups

Have a look at this youth intake I had at Arsenal on 2022, and note the colours of the groups they are assigned to (based on their PA star ratings).

'Elite Talents' in green have at least 4.5* potential, 'Top Talents' in yellow have at least 3.5* potential, and 'Good Talents' in orange have at least 2.5* potential. I've not shown the players with 2* potential or below, but I can tell you that the apparently 'Decent Talents' are listed under a red banner.

The thing is... we as humans have long been conditioned to believe that green = good, yellow = okay, orange = bad, and red = very bad.

These coloured banners can make good or decent talents appear to be worse than they are. If you saw a player with 3* PA under an orange banner, you wouldn't think, "Ooh, he could be a good talent."  You'd probably think, "Eh, he's under orange, guess that means he's not very good." 

I would change the colour scheme to something that better reflects how good these players might become.

 

Hide potential star ratings for players until they reach a certain age / ability level

My final suggestion is quite unusual, but hear me out. Look at the Under-18s team at a top Premier League academy, then tell me how much potential you think each player has. And I mean each and every player in that team.

I'll use my club Arsenal as an example. It's a safe bet to say that Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly are hot prospects, maybe Omari Benjamin as well... but the others? Heck knows. While most of them are unlikely to get any further than the lower leagues at senior level (if they even have professional careers after leaving the academy). Right now, though, it's far too early to even guess how far they might go.

So why, then, are we seeing 15-year-old players in our youth intakes that our HoYDs think only have 2* PA - including white stars? To many FMers, this is just screaming out, "Don't bother signing this kid, he'll never be any good," rather than, "It's too early to say, at least give him a chance first."

One idea to add more scope for uncertainty when judging the PPA of very young players would be to give them more white stars in their potential star ratings. For example, a player with 2 gold stars potential might also have 2 white stars potential, putting their PPA at between 2* to 4*. As a player ages and develops, the white stars will disappear or turn gold, giving us a better idea of where their potential is.

Or... you could hide a player's potential star rating completely, until EITHER they have reached a certain age OR they have reached a certain level of current ability (based on the current level of your first-team squad).

For example, instead of showing a potential star rating, that player's PPA is displayed as "Too early to tell" or "N/A" or something along those lines. An unremarkable young player won't be given a star rating until they have their 17th (or 18th) birthday... while a coach/scout won't give a very young player a potential star rating until their perceived current ability has reached 1.5* (or 2*).

 

If I think of anything else, I'll post it here.

Edited August 31, 2023 by CFuller

[Zachary Whyte]

Thank you for the detailed feedback, we will review further.