'You can't win anything with kids' - Youth Challenge

[rryanwilliams]

Hi everyone, back here for the second year running. Last year I made a save with FC United which went well but I was unable to commit to it and regularly post new threads. This year, as you can see by the title, I'm hoping to go with a new challenge and give myself limits while by being a one club manager, I can develop as much home grown talent as I can. So the rules I have given myself so far are:

- Signings must only be players who are aged 21 and under
- Players who are signed over 21 are not allowed to play more than 50% of league games for the season
- Every season I must bring in at least 2 players from the youth candidates
- I must aim to have a greater Income than Expenditure on players

There are a few teams who I have in mind who have good youth facilities and youth recruitment, and I need your help on deciding who to go with.

- SL Benfica - Has state of the art youth facilities and already known for players who they have brought through in the past, including Angel Di Maria, Renato Sanches, Andre Gomes and Victor Lindelof just off the top of my head.

- Manchester United - Ever since the Class of 92, their investment in youth has always been a high and being a supporter of them myself I would like to try the challenge out with these. They have had a youth player in a league matchday squad for every game for the past 80 years.

- Barcelona - Been recently investing in a lot of youth players with the likes of Denis Suarez, O.Dembele, Semedo and with the money they have in the bank I could potentially bring in more additions that would help with their philosophy.

- AFC Ajax - It wouldn't be a youth challenge without including this team, having the youngest average age in a European cup final and exceptional junior coaching and youth recruitment, they already have many players who have the potential to become league stars.

I don't have to pick one of these four, as you could also give me a recommendation. These are just some of the teams who I thought of straight away with good facilities. I'm looking forward to starting this project and hope you are too. Thanks for reading

 

[Sammuthegreat]

My personal vote from those four would be for Barca. Bring back La Masia! Weirdly I don't see many Barca saves here. Granted the pressure to succeed would be enormous and beating Real Madrid with those restrictions could be a big ask, but I'm backing you!

Lower level options in England would be Southampton or Middlesbrough.

Or maybe somewhere in France - Lyon if you're wanting a big club, or Auxerre if you fancy starting a bit lower and building up a good bedrock of young talent where they can learn their trade at a lower level and work their way upwards. Auxerre had an awesome youth setup in FM17. Besides, France is a hotbed of young superstars in Footy Manager due to the high national stats.

Sporting/Benfica were the top two youth systems in the game in FM17 I think. You could definitely succeed there, though I think it'd be easier there than most countries.

So there you go. My top 3 would be (1) Auxerre (2) Barca (3) Lyon.

 

[rryanwilliams]

So there you go. My top 3 would be (1) Auxerre (2) Barca (3) Lyon.

Thanks for the input, I did have the idea of going with Southampton, but like them, Middlesbrough and Auxerre their budgets will be low and if I wanted to make progress with the club I'd be looking at signing older, more experienced players and then I'd be breaking one of my rules.

I think my two choices at the moment are Barcelona (La Masia) or Manchester United (Class of '18). Although I do like the thought of Lyon, but no young players come to mind from their squad that I can use. I think I'll be posting my first proper post with the team I'll be choosing either later tonight (UK time) or tomorrow, as I'm stuck with college work at the moment

 

[Sammuthegreat]

Go with Barca then, that's my official vote

I'm pretty sure you could get promoted from Ligue 2 using Auxerre's youth players, you know... Ligue 2 is pretty low standard, and their youth will be closer to first-team-ready quality than the youth of higher-level clubs. And they'll be all the better by the time you reach Ligue 1 because of all the first-team football they've had by that point.

I think I need to just play as Auxerre myself, haha

 

[rryanwilliams]

Go with Barca then, that's my official vote

I'm pretty sure you could get promoted from Ligue 2 using Auxerre's youth players, you know... Ligue 2 is pretty low standard, and their youth will be closer to first-team-ready quality than the youth of higher-level clubs. And they'll be all the better by the time you reach Ligue 1 because of all the first-team football they've had by that point.

My mistake, I thought they were in Ligue 1. Let me know how it goes if you decide to go with them.

Barcelona La Masia Youth Challenge 2018

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It's Barcelona who I've decided to take charge of due to their quality of past youth players and hoping I can replicate that. Although this may take a long time as my Football Manager skills aren't the best, my aims for this save are:

- To have a full homegrown squad
- To win the Champions League with a homegrown starting XI
- For Spain to win the World Cup with a Barcelona homegrown starting XI

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So I have gone with two tactics depending on match situations, one being the general 4-1-2-3 with a False 9, hoping to bring back the 2011 Guardiola days. The other being a 4-4-2 diamond narrow, with Messi hopefully playing a key role in the number 10 slot as a Shadow Striker. I have a £71.92m transfer budget and not many outstanding youth prospects in the u19's squad or Barcelona B squad, so will definitely be bringing in some players aged below 21 that will have key roles in the first team and will hopefully keep hold of them for many years to come.

Moreover there are players I will look to be getting rid of who are getting on a bit with age and can add to my budget, including the likes of Paco Alcacer, Vermaelen and Turan. I won't mind if you drop a few good young players who I can look at, although I do have a few in mind already.

Also, anyone know how I can enlarge my photos when I insert them on here? For some reason they're tiny and I can't do anything with them. Next post: Pre-season & Transfers

 

[Sammuthegreat]

Wowsers, that second formation is attacking. Three midfielders who by definition roam from their positions, and no holding player. Could leave you wide open, though granted it should also mean you keep the ball well, hopefully...

As for new players... I don't have FM18 yet so can't really help! Not much use I know. This seems like a decent place to start - I can vouch for Rui Pedro in FM16, for what it's worth...?

Football Manager 2018 top 10 cheap wonderkids for under £1million: The best young players for anyone on a budget - Mirror Online

 

[rryanwilliams]

Wowsers, that second formation is attacking. Three midfielders who by definition roam from their positions, and no holding player. Could leave you wide open, though granted it should also mean you keep the ball well, hopefully...

Thanks for that link, I'll be looking at a few but budget isn't affecting me at this point with it being over £70m

Pre Season 2017/18
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So we arrived at pre-season playing a total of eight games, I arranged a couple myself mainly on the basis of improving the familiarity of my tactics, and increasing finance from the income of games (which is a handy tip if you are a lower league team). My only loss came to Bayern which apart from AS Monaco, were the only challenging team there out of the bunch. The standout players were Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi, who got a combined total of 29 goals and 17 assists across the 8 games. Sounds good until I mentioned we played 3 semi-professional teams. Next up is the Super Cup against Real Madrid, who are favourites to win over us.

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Matthijs De Ligt is Barcelona's first signing of the summer, at £17 million. Aged just 17 and a left footed centre back he can add some depth to our defence and can be with us for at least 10 years at a high standard. I'm looking forward to him developing and would be good to see him as a regular starter in the future.


Super Cup 2017/18


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A disappointing first game as we concede two away goals to Real Madrid, obviously Cristiano Ronaldo would score a brace but Bale standing out as their biggest threat, getting an assist and creating 6 key chances. Some of my players didn't play up to their expected level so maybe I'll change it around for the next game. Iniesta seemed like our most influencial player, and he only played 31 minutes.

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What a comeback. Couldn't have asked for a better start from the lads, scoring 4 goals in the first 24 minutes. Like I said before I had to change the team around as some players didn't play well in the first leg, so I dropped Dembele for Deulofeu who was brilliant, created many key chances and grabbed an assist himself. Dropped Semedo For Roberto who had a solid performance, and lastly brought Iniesta in for Paulinho, who played well until he got injured and is now out for 4 weeks with sprained ankle ligaments. Next post: Ins & Outs, August Results

 

[jigsaw89]

cool

 

[jigsaw89]

Go with Barca then, that's my official vote

I'm pretty sure you could get promoted from Ligue 2 using Auxerre's youth players, you know... Ligue 2 is pretty low standard, and their youth will be closer to first-team-ready quality than the youth of higher-level clubs. And they'll be all the better by the time you reach Ligue 1 because of all the first-team football they've had by that point.

I think I need to just play as Auxerre myself, haha

hello I'm french, and I'm going to start a game with auxerre, would you have any advice to give me? tactics ect .. because I have a lot of trouble please .. thank you very much ..

 

[Sammuthegreat]

Don't want to hijack OP's thread, but...

I don't yet own FM18 so I can't really confirm which tactics work best. My most recent experience was in FM16.

I personally found that a Leicester-style tactic worked best. Either 4-2-3-1 with a single inside forward and a winger, or 4-4-2 with one deep-lying forward and one advanced forward. The 4-4-2 could even become a 4-2-4 if you want to push the wingers up, but your midfielders will have to have fairly simple tactical roles.

Counter-attack strategy, fairly structured, slightly deeper defence, play wider, more direct passing, clear to flanks, pass into space, run at defence, closing down more... there's probably a few more tactics in there, but this tactic produces some lovely counter-attacking goals and remains pretty defensively solid.

Finally, at lower league level you'll want to keep your player roles quite simple so the poor players don't get confused. One Central Midfielder on Defend, one Box-to-box or Central Midfielder on Support. One winger on Support, one on Attack. Make sure if you're going one up top that he has a Support role unless he's a great all round player who can play Complete Forward on Attack.

Whichever winger is on Attack should have a Support full back behind him, and vice versa on the other side.

Think that's about it. Always worked brilliantly for me on various versions of FM.

 

[jigsaw89]

thank you for all his precisions, it's a lot help, I'll try to create a tactic from that thank you.

 

[rryanwilliams]

Ins & Outs - Summer 2017


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I'm happy with the business I've done in my first window, 3 players in, 4 players out (7 including loans). Afonso Sousa is only 17 so he will go in my U19's squad and hopefully he can grow in the future, so will hope to make the £7.5 million signing a bargain. My third is Arthur from Gremio who was nearly half of my total expenditure, in £20.5 million. He has traits of "plays one-twos" and "dictates tempo" which is the exact type of player I'd like in my team to bring back the old Barcelona philosophy. As for my outs, Vermaelen and Alcacer were the players who I mentioned in an earlier post who I wanted to move onto a different club, and succeeded in doing so. Aleix Vidal was another but I was only receiving loan offers so that'll do, as for the big fee, Rafinha joining Chelsea for up to £38 million. Despite being one of my homegrown players, he was never going to be a first team regular and I had better players in mind to bring in.

August Results 2017

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Left it until late to confirm the win against Alaves, and Rakitic missing a penalty to make it 3-0 (I forgot to choose my set piece takers, so when I saw Rakitic stepping up to take it I knew he was already missing it) and Messi finished off the match with a late penalty. Our second game was more convincing, beating Coruna 6-0 and could have easily made it double figures with Paulinho and Suarez having good performances, and Arthur with a bright debut picking up an assist. No player of the month for August as we only played two games.

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So I watched the Champions League draw live, and probably couldn't have come up against tougher teams out of each pot. We come up against the team we faced in the 2014/15 Champions League Final and current holders of Serie A which will clearly be our toughest contest. RB Leipzig have impressed in recent years with standout players including Timo Werner and Naby Keita, speaking of him, who is set to join our fourth opponent Liverpool who are representing England in this group. Should be an interesting set of fixtures but hopefully we'll make it to the Round of 16. Next post: September Results