Hi guys,

With the introduction of the current player development system, it has become much more difficult to develop young players and this has in some ways improved game play by increasing the level of difficulty. But I must admit I find it increasingly difficult to loan out very decent young players to AI-clubs, even with no wage demands. Has the AI-clubs completely stopped loaning young players or what has happened?

Kind regards
Alexander

They haven’t stopped, but they give priority to hiring over loaning. Also, between turns 129 and 18 in the next season they don’t loan at all, as they know there will be no or very few matches to play.

What we need is a proper youth league, that way we wouldnt need to loan out players. Either that or some sort of youth tournament that managers cud join at the begining of the season.

Wouldn’t that make developing players too easy again? Some kind of youth league/tournament has been requested before and we haven’t discarded the idea, it just needs time to design and develop properly.

I played pretty much my youth team for 2 seasons in the fast ticker, none of them really improved, we got relegated then finished bottom of the league and I was fired. Seems almost impossible to improve youths to a playable level, even if given first team experience for 2 seasons. There didn’t seem to be any correlation I could see between playing first team football and not playing first team football.

Friendlies should improve players …

But friendlies are not desired anymore.

Must admit I’m quite happy that the need to manually arrange scores of friendly games has been eliminated. The idea of introducing a youth/reserve league could be interesting because currently it’s simply to difficult to develop young players. Perhaps the number of experience points/match could depend on the level of facilities. A couple of new levels in player development could replace the single: ‘Needs official games’. Could be something like: ‘needs match practice’, ‘needs senior matches’, ‘needs to play for 1. div.’

I hear you guys. I’ll give some thought to both options proposed (youth/reserve league and an alternative way to improve player development via investment). I think it’s worth it to find some balance between the old model (too easy) and the new one (hard most of the time).

I’d be in favour of a youth/reserve league but where it is not too easy to develop players into stars as the current way makes it almost impossible to develop them into anything worthwhile.

Most youth players never make it but this is where we could try and develop them. Then you can either:

1) release/sell them on if they are not going to make the grade at your club
2) sell them on to the bigger clubs for money
3) keep them and they are the pride and joy of your team :)

What should be the maximum age in a youth league?

I would say 20 for a youth league

So far I don’t share the experience that it’s too difficult to develop young players.It does often take a long time though.

There were some changes a couple months ago to make the profiles that make players reach full potential younger more frequent in the game, but it takes a few seasons as usual for this to make a real difference (old players will retire and the new generation will reach potential younger on average). I tend to agree with Dimitri so I was hoping this change could improve things, and maybe it will in a few more seasons. A youth league will take time to plan and develop anyway, so we can devote some time to it and keep evaluating how player development is playing out. This will be an interesting and important topic to keep alive for a few seasons to share our observations.

I’m still a bit unsure about a youth league and the complexity it adds to the game. I’ve been thinking of a few ideas to try and address this issue, what do you guys think about these:

1) Allow the team to pay a certain amount of money to simulate match experience for a player. This should work ONLY for simple “play matches” requirement, not for play abroad, play for division 1, etc. The exact amount will vary depending on player quality, minimum coaching level requirement for next step and this action should be limited to once (overall, not per player) every x turns (maybe 3?). For example, I could pay 100k to simulate match experience to one of my players that need to play official matches, then I will only be able to do it again (for any player) after x turns. Players need to play a few matches to improve, so I’d have to do this the same number of times for him to improve.

2) Extend number of times players improve by training so that match experience is not required until a bit later than what it is today.

3) Allow you to offer an amount of money in your loan clauses for each match the player is used by the team loaning him. For example, I could loan list a player offering 50k for each match he plays.

My preference is for option 1, it is the simplest to implement and tweak as needed. Actually option 2 is simpler to implement, but I think it will reduce too much the control we have over player improvement, it would mostly happen automatically. Option 3 is not bad either in my view, but it requires a bit more work to limit the amount that can be offered and also make CPU teams “aware” of the new rule so they can make use of it (loan players with this option when they need a bit of money).

Instead of my option 2 above (which I probably wouldn’t want to do anyway) we could have the following (thanks Samir):

2) You have an option to “send a player” to gain match experience (without using money) and, after x turns (depending on coaching requirements, coaching level and how much he still needs to play to improve), he improves. During this period the player would be unavailable to be used by your team and you could only send one player at a time to gain match experience. Obviously the number of turns that it takes to improve this way should be more than if you were actually using the player in your matches.

I think a youth league would be a bad idea, sounds like a lot of extra effort for me.

The problem here is you don’t want to make developing players too easy. I have no problem developing them now, it take time but I’m fine with the current system apart from goalkeepers. They are difficult to improve as you don’t want to concede serious amounts of goals in official matches!

All you really have to do is sub on a young player with 30minutes remaining until he is good enough to loan out, simple.

Agree about goalkeepers, maybe just for them I could extend the amount of improvement provided by training and reduce the amount provided by match experience.

Regarding the youth development ‘issue’, wouldn’t it be an idea to go for an additional investment area called ‘youth’?

In the first levels it could increase the effect of the investment in ‘coaching’ for younger players. Similar to what already has been mentioned as one of the options in this topic. This effect could increase until a maximum level that will be reached in level 4 for example. One of the questions here is if you should limit the effect to the age when players will reach their full potential (x% of potential reached) or to a fixed maximum age (21yr?).

From, for example, level 5 you could think of having a satellite club (similar to what many clubs have in real life) to stall some players.

From level 5 to 7 you’re bound to choose a second division club from an inactive country (then these leagues have also a function) where you can install 1, 2 or 3 players depending on your investment level. This player will then be placed here for a full season and cannot be used at all by your own team. The club of your choice can be selected in the first couple of turns of every new season (because of promotion/ relegation the clubs you can choose from will change each year). I like the idea of a payment per match, so the bigger clubs will bring money to these clubs, which enables them to become stronger as well. Depending on the coaching level of the satellite club, it might be more or less money that you’ll need to pay per match.
For all other youngster that stay at your squad, the effect of the investment will stay similar to what has been reached with level 4.

From level 8 to 10 you could think of having a first division club from an inactive country as a satellite club that will not play International matches. And again, from level 8 to 10 you could limit the number of players per level from 1 to max 3 players per year.

The interesting part here is that depending on the type and number of youngsters with potential in your squad and their need for development, you can play around with your investment level.

This solution secures us all that a least three potential players will have the option to develop to first division degree. At that time they’ll probably be interesting enough for many clubs for loan period for further improvements.

And for all other less talented players there’s still the option for a loan/ being sub from time to time or just training to develop themselves….

Still it makes sense that it takes time to develop talents and it can last several seasons before a player reaches his full potential.

To my opinion such an investment area should only have an additional a coaching effect on players until they’ve reached 90/95% of their full potential or are max. 25yr. Then the coaching investment should take take over.

(To make the solution more future proof, you could also think of a system where you can select a satellite club from countries that are ranked at least 5 places lower than your club’s country. In this case even active managers of less developed teams could send out a request to become a satellite club, when they are in need of money and some talented players.)

Thanks for the detailed suggestions, it sounds really interesting! I’ll definitely consider all that is being discussed here as one of the next big changes :-D