Football Manager 2014 Youth are a big deal

Introduction

This guide is the successor to a guide I did for Football Manager 2013. To make this guide better than the last I will

focus on how to best develop/profit from youth players;

use a better organisation/structure; and

be more thorough with the writing and editing.

Why Should I Care?

Stop and think, what is your youth academy doing for you? What would you prefer?

a non-existant academy - no gain/no loss

a money sink - So you have a youth team, so what?

a few homegrown players for the next generation - to meet homegrown quotas

a homegrown team ala Atletico Bilbao

a cash generating machine.

I am going to assume you want a few homegrown players for the next generation: to save money on transfers and help fill quotas :) Ok, and a cash generating machine. How? Buy youth early when they are cheap, develop them quick, sell them as soon as they have developed into somewhat decent footballers.It is just that developing youth (quickly or not) is the tricky part and this is what this guide focuses on. So read on!

What Do The Star Rating Recommendations Mean?

Ability and Player Ratings

Every player has a Current Ability (CA) and a Potential Ability (PA) star rating. Star ratings are subjective - this means that they can be wrong, to be precise, inaccurate. Do not worry about inaccuracy in the current ability rating of your player, it is only a problem for the speculative PA star rating.

a half star - below average

one star - average

one and a half stars - decent

two stars - useful

two and a half stars - fairly good

three stars - good

three and a half stars - very good

four stars - superb

four and a half stars - excellent

five stars - A Star Player. Don't be too excited by this rating if you are not in the top league. Also be careful, this rating could mean that the player is too good for your club and is likely to generate buying-interest from a bigger club

You must ask yourself - "At what point is a player not good enough to be in my team"?Personally I do not allow one star players in my team. This is important because it is a general measure of when I start to allow my youth players to be used in my first team. This means that I keep my youth in youth teams (or farm them out on loan) until they hit one and a half stars, then they become regular rotation options. Until my youth are "useful", my youth is just backup bench-warmer team for my first team.

Current Ability The CA rating is a rough reflection of how good a player currently is in their best position. The rating you will see is determined by:

the current stats of the player

Self Explanatory.

stats needed for the role:

Different roles have different attribute requirements.

For example: all defenders need composure, positioning, tackling, etc. A Central Defender star rating will include heading, but a fullback rating will not. A Central Defender with poor aerial ability should probably be retrained to become a fullback

See my guide "Football Roles Explained" for specific examples of what Football Manager considers. This does not consider your actual formation - eg. very fluid positioning and roaming which would mean your forwards help out to defend.

how capable a player is in the position:

uncomfortable (0%)

awkward

competent

accomplished

natural (100%)

A player's capability in a role is improved with games played in the position & specialised training. A player's capability in a position decreases with neglect. NB Every player has a position/s they are a natural in.

Example: putting an excellant ball winning Centre Midfielder in the Centre Defense is a waste of a player if they are "uncomfortable"

the scouting ability of your coach/scout giving you the rating:

I personally use as a rule of thumb +/- one star for a coach of 14~ scouting ability. This is until i have scouted the player multiple times, maybe 3 times.. or more, then the margin of error will be less.

There will be a little variation/error in the rating of your players when they are actually playing for your team. Example: Ask your physio to rate your players and compare this to your Assistant Manager's rating. Variation of ratings could also be due to the player improving or becoming worse.

Potential AbilityYou could think of PA as simply being a pool of points that can be spent as a player develops to increase CA. PA is a set limit to how far a player can develop.

You can still maximize a player's star rating for their role if you don't waste any of the pool of PA points to develop a player (ie: use "training focus"). For example, suppose you have a young fullback with:

good potential, maybe 3 stars. You may see this as 4 star potential in the few months or so because of stupid coach ratings;

awful attacking stats;

excellant defending stats

reasonable physical stats you could retrain the player to be a four star Anchorman/Defensive Mid (breaking down attacks with good tacking and positioning). Thus your player's poor attacking stats are ignored. For more information about stats needed for positions. For more Information see my guide "Football Roles Explained".

What Determines The Pace Of A Player's Growth?

The pace/rate of a player's growth is determined by several factors which are:

Determination

A mental attribute, the higher the better

Personality

the ideal type is "model citizen" or "model professional" - professionalism is key

Age

younger players develop faster (see graph below)

The size of the difference between a player's current ability and potential ability

The more potential ability "pool" that a player has to develop, the faster they develop

Qualitiy of Coaching

Go to "training" - "coaches" - then maxmise the rating of each role by trying to dedicate a coach to each particular role of training. If not possible, assign your coaches as few roles as possible. You can find the formula for coach role ratings in my other guide "Key Attributes"

Quality of training facilities/youth facilities

depending on age of player - players in your youth team use youth facilities

Experience

Most important of all, players need match time to develop. Not getting good game experience can halt (and eventually reverse) the development of a player. Better experience = better development.

Example: a 17 year old " model professional" player getting regular game time with your first team, with the potential to become a superstar, training at a start-of-the-art youth facility, with 5 star coaching in every category- will develop remarkably quick.

The usual player attribute growth curves (read "skill" as technique)

What this graph shows us:

Youth players have very poor mental stats

Physical ability peaks at around 24 to 25

Technique peaks at 29 to 30

Mental ability never peaks, but is near max at 30 years +

Physical abiltiy develops a lot from 20 to 25

Players who don't need to do much running will have long careers

Where Should I Play My Youth?

I use the following as a rule of thumb:

excellent - playing regularly for your first team

great - on loan to a similar division club as a regular

good - on loan to a club one or two divisions lower as a regular

good or ok - cover for your first team

ok - on loan to a club that is two divisions or more lower as a regular(better if very young/undeveloped)

ok - youth team

ok or bad - on loan to a club in the same division as cover

ok or bad - friendly games (useful for match fitness)

bad - reserve team

bad - on to a club to a club in a lower division as cover (better if very young/undeveloped)

If I believe a youth player has real potential, then I will try to have the player playing regular football - whether in my first team, as regulars on a loan team or anywhere I can. I say this because generally Youth leagues don't have very regular games. Look at the schedule of your youth team and decide if they are playing often enough. Youth leagues also seem to have a strange habit of booking an occassional busy schedule (an injuy risk).

Ok, so I want to send a player on loan. Any advice?Go to the transfers screen to check the squad status of every outgoing loan.Be careful of your Director of Youth Development - particularly in the lower leagues.

In the staff responsibilities make sure -

Transfers(outgoing) Finds clubs for your Youth players = Director of Youth Development

Transfers(incoming) Finalises signings for Youth players = YOU

Yes, the responsibility for finalising signings of your your youth players heading out on loans is in the Transfers(incoming) section.

Yes, you will have to do stupid media conferences to announce signings of youth players and etc. But most importantly of all - You can cancel loans of your star youth players when they will only be used as cover/backup players (and therefore lose match experience and might even reverse development). Yes, some Directors of Youth Development are pretty stupid (or whoever is responsible).

Feeder clubs? They make it more likely your youth will be accepted as a loanee. Personally I don't bother. To send a player to a feeder club, go to squad status and then "send to feeder club". Afterwards, go to your transfer screen and check to see if their squad status in the feeder team is acceptable to you. If not, CANCEL the deal!

Loaning players sounds greatYes it does, except that the receiving club doesn't care if they play too much and get injured, or don't play at all. It is only really a problem with player susceptible to injury.

Any Tips For Training?

Nope. Maybe it is because I am lazy, but also because the preset training focuses seem to be good enough for my taste.

If you still need more information you could read this excellent guide by @Pushthemwide.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=145653277

Personalities Matter - But How?

Personalities affect how the players acts and behaves on and off the field. These "Personalities" are governed by what I call the Behaviour attributes. The behaviour attributes are in the following categories :

Determination - the only visible behaviour attribute

Professionalism

Temperament

Loyalty

Pressure

Sportsmanship

Ambition

Controversy - a negative attribute - the less the better

The list of personalitiesThe personality of the player is reflection of the sum total of the behaviours of the player.

Good personalities are bold - Neutral personalities are in plaintext - Bad personalities are in italics

Balanced – The player has a well-rounded personality that does not fit one of the above specific descriptions.

Born Leader – The player has top Influence and Determination

Casual – The player has very poor Professionalism and poor Determination.

Charismatic Leader – The player has very good Influence, Sportsmanship and Temperament.

Confrontational – The player has poor Sportsmanship and Temperment.

Devoted / Very Loyal / Loyal / Fairly Loyal – The player has very good Loyalty but poor Ambition.

Driven / Determined / Fairly Determined – the player has very good Determination and a fair level of ambition.

Evasive – The player has good Pressure and Professionalism.

Honest / Sporting / Fairly Sporting – The player has very good Sportsmanship but poor Determination.

Iron Willed – The player has top Pressure and good Determination

Jovial – The player has good Pressure, a fair level of Temperament, but poor Professionalism.

Leader – The player has top Influence

Level-Headed – The player has fairly balanced levels of Controversy, Loyalty, Professionalism, Sportmanship and Temperament.

Light Hearted – The player has good Pressure and Sportsmanship and a fair level of Determination and Temperament.

Low Determination / Easily Discouraged – The player has very poor Determination and poor Ambition.

Low Self-Belief – The player has very poor Pressure and poor Determination.

Media Friendly – The player has low Controversy.

Model Citizen – The player has very good Ambition, Determination, Loyalty, Pressure, Professionalism, Sportsmanship and Temperament.

Model Professional / Professional / Fairly Professional – The player has very good Professionalism and a fair level of Temperament.

Outspoken –The player has high Controversy.

Perfectionist – The player has very good Ambition, Determination and Professionalism but poor Temperament.

Reserved – The player has very low Controversy and good Professionalism.

Resilient – The player has very good Pressure and good Determination.

Resolute – The player has very good Professionalism and Determination

Short Tempered – The player has high Controversy and very poor Temperament.

Slack – The player has no Professionalism and poor Determination.

Spineless – The player has no Pressure and poor Determination.

Spirited – The player has good Pressure, Professionalism and a fair level of Temperament.

Temperamental – The player has very poor Temperament.

Unambitious – The player has very poor Ambition but a fair level of Loyalty.

Unflappable – The player has good Pressure and good Temperament.

Unsporting / Realist – The player has very poor Sportsmanship and a fair level of Determination.

Very Ambitious / Ambitious / Fairly Ambitious – The player has very good Ambition but poor Loyalty.

Volatile – The player has poor Temperament

Why Should Youth Be Mentored?

Because it improves a youth player's mental attributes, and we know how poor youth can be mentally.

How does mentoring work? It is complicated. The short answer is:

These two points are very good/excellant:

the Mentoree may gain Mental Attribute points(and develop faster as a result);

the Mentoree may change personality (i.e.: gain professionalism = become easier to manage & develop faster);

The next two points can be good/useful.:

the Mentoree may gain a Player Preferred Move (PPM) from the Mentor;

the mentor and the player being mentored may become each other's favoured personnel(helps keep them happy/at your club - not clear).

If you are not careful choosing your mentor, the mentor and the mentoree may become each other's enemy. This is bad and eventually you will find that you have to sell one of them off. :(

So how do you get a mentor for a player?Talk to a player, in the development menu choose "tutor":

Mentor - The player that you want to be the Teacher

- be 23/24 or older (except for the captain, but the captain must be older than the player to be mentored)

- have a high reputation

- have at least awkard competency in a position that the Mentoree is Natural or Accomplished in

- not be undergoing Player Preferred Move training

- Squad status: higher than the Mentoree

Mentoree: The player you want to learn from the senior player

- be 21 years old or younger ;

- have a low reputation;

- Squad status: squad rotation or lower

Note:

- "Off field mentor" option: focus on personality change of the Mentoree

- "improving game" option: player being mentored may learn Player Preferred Moves.

Where Do I Find These Youth?

Answer: In youth teams! But seriously, anyway you can. It just depends how much time YOU want to spend looking. Here are some tips:

Find & Subscribe to as many major youth international tournaments as you can tolerate. When the tournament enters your news feed, scout all the best players on the tournament statistics sheets. Go to back to the tournament information page to find the link for player statistics from the tournament.

NB Just because some player are in the leading statistics, it does not mean that they are great players - most likely they are good players who got lucky, but not the best players you actually want to buy - scout them to find out which one it is!

randomly scouting teams that are known to have a high standard (national youth teams and other club youth teams from around the world)

Scouts should have very high PA scouting ability, CA is almost irrelevant - some of the best players in the world remain undiscovered and rot in low reputation south american & central american leagues.

Don't bother with Trialist games - send your scouts instead. Trialist games can be useful for bottom league managers looking for good free transfers.

Scout every potential signing multiple times. You will get a more accurate assessment of the player and uncover their weaknesses.

Ask yourself - "do you I really have to sign that player immediately?." You could wait and scout the player again and save yourself a lot of heartache in failed potential.

What Do I Look For When Manually Scouting Players?

It depends on the position - here are a few examples to give you an idea of some of things you should look for. This is all subjective and it really depends on the standard of quality of your team and your future expectations. In the following examples I am being deliberately highly opinionated.

Click on the pictures to expand them.

Centre Forward-TBA-

Attacking Midfielder

Midfielder-TBA-

Central Defender-TBA-

Fullback/Wingback

Goalkeeper-TBA-

How Can I Improve My Own Youth Academy? What Are Regens?

Do you see the players with the stupid CG faces? (example: see above player) They are "regens" - randomly* generated youth players created to replace/refresh the database of players.

*NB: Regens are randomly generated, but ... there are some factors which strongly influence the standard of quality of the regens (CA and PA):

Reputation of the club within the league

The best regens will be created at the best club in the league. For example: Barcalona and Manchester United. This means the club with the most reputation - not the club that has been winning the league recently.

Reputation of the country/league

Example: there is a better standard of regen created in Brazil's second highest reputation team than in Mexico's top reputation team.

Youth Intake Coordinator

This factor is ambigious, but It seems to affect the nationalities of your youth intake. Basically, check the scouting range/knowledge of the person who is responsible for getting youth to trial at your club - see "staff reponsibilities".

Youth Recruiting Network

This factor is ambigious. A simple explanation is that it affects the local geographic area that your regens come from. It is not known how this exactly affects the quality of regens - you should still try to upgrade to the maximum possible given your club's current status. it is only possible to expand recruitment network in the off season.

Feeder clubs may also have an impact on your regen's quality, but it is not known if it actually does. You can request an upgrade of your Youth Recruiting Network & ask for Feeder clubs by talking to the boardroom. NB: Not all boardrooms are created equal. Some boardrooms have a sugardaddy and some are not very ambitious at all.

Where Are The Regens Created?

Regens first appear as trialists at all of the club teams that have youth acadamies. A seperate "candidates" team will appear in the list of squads that your club has on the date of respective country's regen date. You can't see your opponent's candidates/trialists: they will instead directly join the under18 team on a youth contract (but they will still be cheap & undeveloped).

A day or more later, depending on the club & league, there will be a trial day event at your club (In real life youth trials will probably go for several weeks). After the trial event, the trialists will be offered youth contracts by your Assistant Manager. Trialists accepted by the club will join the most junior youth team. The rest will be deleted when the trialist squad is deleted from the list of squads

Here are a few regen creation dates of the most highly rated nations:

Argentina - 2nd April

Brazil - 20th September

England - 13th March

France - 8th March

Holland - 25th March

Spain - 28th March

When Are The Regens Created?

Regens will be created on the following dates, you may find your trial day is a day or more later.

28th JanuaryAnguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Dominican Rep., El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Surinam, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands

23rd FebruaryAlbania, American Samoa, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, FYR Macedonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, San Marino, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu

8th MarchCroatia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, N. Ireland, Russia, Scotland, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Wales

13th MarchAustria, England

17th MarchSlovakia

18th MarchBelgium, Czech Republic, Demark, Italy, Poland, Portugal

19th MarchBulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Uruguay

23th MarchMexico

25th MarchHolland

28th MarchSerbia, Spain

2nd AprilArgentina, India, South Africa

17th AprilIndonesia

19th AprilHong Kong

27th AprilAustralia

7th JuneBolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela

13th AugustIceland

27th AugustAfghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, East Timor, Guam, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Macau, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Northern Mariana, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen

2nd SeptemberMalaysia, Sweden

14th SeptemberSouth Korea

19th SeptemberChile

20th SeptemberBrazil, Ireland

25th SeptemberFinland

28th SeptemberSingapore, Colombia

1st OctoberNorway

3rd OctoberAlgeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Rep., Chad, Congo, Djibouti, DR Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, ♥♥♥♥♥, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé &Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar, Zimbabwe

8th OctoberChina

16th OctoberPeru

2nd NovemberBelarus

26th DecemberUSA

You Promised Me Big Profits!

No I didn't. But if you stick to the formula of bringing youth with good potential to your club - doing your best to develop your entire youth squad - selling players when they begin to establish themselves as regular first grade footballers - ... then there is big money to be made.

Having said that, selling your future stars is probably something you will only do against your will (and then don't forget future fees and percentage cuts). Seriously, don't sell off players that can take your club to future success.

You will probably get most of your money selling the rest of your youth team that you don't need for your first team. So instead of letting your youth graduates sit in your reserve team, you should probably sell them. Selling just a few players for a few hundred thousand each can mean you have a very profitable year.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=192175300

Youth are a big deal