How Long Does it Take a Head of Youth Development to influence Youth Intakes?

[cosmiccreepers]

I know questions about Head of Youth Development are asked fairly often, but this is a question I've never seen an answer to yet. I've wondered about how it works across multiple versions of the game, but I am at a loss at the moment.

So in my understanding of a Head of Youth Development, they are there to help recruit people for your junior teams (behind the scenes) and can also influence the personalities of players in those teams. However as these teams are basically pools of players from 12-15, when you hire a new head of youth development they are already working with a pool of players. By your first intake, they've likely had no chance to influence the personality of the older players in that pool, and a very small chance of having brought in any 15 year olds that are strong. As there's been no generating of new players in their time at the club the pool is mostly full of players they've had no influence on...

With that assumption, does it really take a Head of Youth Development 2 or 3 years to start having big impacts on a youth intake?

I'm about 10 years into a save (this one on FM21) where i focused quite heavily on upgrading my head of youth developments when i could, and I'm finding that so much of my youth team is full of players with "Casual" and "Unambitious" (and similar) personalities... despite having had Head of Youth Developments that have had "Fairly Professional", "Resolute", and now "Model Citizen" personalities. Despite the improving reputation of my club, my improved facilities and recruitment, improved scouting knowledge, and improved Head of Youth Development, it's feeling like my youth intakes are actually getting worse and not better!!!

Does anyone have a better explanation or understanding about what is going on and any mistakes I may be making? I've started a similar save on FM22 and don't want to fall for the same pitfalls.

 

[fc.cadoni]

Even if you have a Model Citizen HoYD, does not mean you will receive Professional or Fairly Professional Youth Players. This is achievement via mentoring as the years passing. You are not doing something wrong, but you need to take care other part of the game - after the player will appear in your squad.

 

[cosmiccreepers]

Ok, so yes I get this part of it and I do use mentoring... but my main confusion is that despite improving all my facilities/recruitment/reputation and then also selecting HoYDs that are strong in the role with good personalities, I am seeing more players in my youth intake with negative traits like "casual" and "unambitious" than i was seeing in my early youth intake (where it was dominated by "balanced" at worst). It seems like more than just "oh its a bad intake year" when im hitting my 3rd year in a row with no players with positive personalities and potential significantly lower than those that came before that.

The only real thing I can think of, is that the pool of players in my juniour squad at the start of the save are more likely to be assigned neutral personalities than those spawned later on in the game? Or else there really is something going on with how I've set it up. It would just be nice to hear if someone knows/can explain this part of the game and what i might actually be seeing.