National team in the mix - England..

[craiigman]

Currently managing Celtic going into my last year of my contract, reluctant to sign a new deal, went looking for what else there might be. England job available, declare my interest, get offered the job, accept the job. Stay with Celtic till my contract runs out.

Things appear to have changed a bit since I last took an International job on FM.

Theres:

- Senior

- B team

- Under 21s

- Under 20s

- Under 19s

The B team and under 20's don't have a manager, but the under 20's squad is stacked compared to both under 21's and under 19's.

There any tips and advise on managing the 3 age groups?

Also what is the B team for?

edit: I'm at the start of the 3rd season, so is still all real players if that helps at all?

[enigmatic]

U20s play a summer world cup every two seasons but no games in between (U19s team qualifies for that tournament). So it's probably "stacked" at the moment because all the best eligible players from the other two youth squads got moved into it for that tournament. You can safely leave it empty the rest of the time.

U21s play a Euro competition every couple of seasons and a lot of qualifiers and friendlies in between. U21 and U20 tournament finals don't clash with senior ones but they do clash with each other if you qualify for both. The qualifiers are all in the same international windows as the senior sides.

Age qualifications are dependent on how old people are at the start of the qualifying competition, so you can end up with 23 year old senior internationals in the U21 Euro, if you decide to make them available (other nations do for the finals and don't for qualifiers if they're good enough for the senior squad)

You don't have to manage all three teams unless you want to. Or you can manage them only some of the time (qualifying is laughably easy for the junior England sides, assuming you've got English leagues loaded so plenty of players to choose from, but the youth tournaments are quite tight and fun as France, Portugal, Italy and Germany normally have excellent sides and Belgium and Holland good ones)

B team is a useful place to dump players that have missed out on the senior squad but I'm not sure the England one does anything? African B teams qualify for the African Championship of Nations.

 

 

[enigmatic]

Also, three years into the game England will have quite a few potentially very useful graduates from their U21 teams who are eligible to be capped by Nigeria (Onomah, Solanke etc) if they don't get capped by England first, which is worth considering when picking squads. I believe shoving them into your B team will also prevent Nigeria from calling on them.

[CFuller]

I'm managing all the England national teams in my current FM17 save. Here are a few pointers I've picked up from my experience.

Don't be afraid to ditch underperforming players and promote lesser lights who are in better form. In the first year of my save, Raheem Sterling was barely playing for Man City - and when he was, he wasn't pulling up any trees. I dropped him to the Under-21s quickly and instead promoted Demarai Gray, who has now already become an established senior player for both England and Leicester.

In the build-up to a major tournament (World Cup, Euros, European Under-21s), organise some friendlies against teams similar to those you'll play in the group stage. Don't forget to organise a couple of warm-up games in the fortnight immediately before the tournament, but leave plenty of recuperation time between your final friendly and your first tournament match. You don't want your players to be fatigued before the action starts for real, do you?

In terms of full internationals playing in a European Championship at Under-21s or even Under-19s level, I don't allow that for regular senior starters. I tend to favour those who played a significant part in the qualifying process when selecting my squads for age-group tournaments.

(To give some examples: Dele Alli and Luke Shaw have been virtually ever-present in my England senior team in 2016/17, so I decided not to plop them back in the Under-21s for the Euros. It wouldn't exactly have been fair on Ben Chilwell or Matthew Targett to give up their left-back spot to Shaw when he'd been playing with the big boys instead of battling through the qualifiers.)

If you've got some easy or low-pressure matches coming up for the senior team, and your Under-21s don't have any competitive matches on, consider temporarily promoting your best young prospects from the Under-21s to the seniors. Getting a few caps under their belts early on is never a bad thing for their international careers.

If you're managing the Under-19s, squad rotation is vital. The European Championship is a nightmare, with only 18 players in your squad and little breathing room between matches. In the Qualifying Round, for instance, you'll have to play three matches in just five days, so your players can and will get very tired - though you'd have to be a complete numpty to miss out on qualification to the Elite Round.

When I get round to picking my Under-19s, I take stamina and work rate into account almost as much as I do ability and potential. Positional versatility also plays a factor. I'd rather have a striker who can play to an adequate level at left-wing and attacking midfield than a left-winger who can't play anywhere else.

I don't bother with the B team. I find that its only real purpose is to upset Chris Sutton.