Improving Young Players - How do you control progression?

rephlex

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Hi all,

I've recently been playing around with youth progression and trying to produce top quality youngsters for my Barca side opposed to buying them (other than stealing other club's promising newgens of course!).

What troubles me is that on paper Barca are very well equipped to have quality youngsters coming through - they have the Youth Academy and brilliant Training facilities, yet it seems that one of the critical areas you need to improve players is giving them games - and so loaning is incredibly important.

I have a few questions associated with this:

1. How does FM process non-playable leagures when it comes to Training and Match Experience? I read that if the league is not playable they won't join the team in training, thus missing huge CA upgrades. Am I better off loaning a promising player to a lower playable league than a decent league abroad?

2. Exactly how do you circumvent this when you have a 16-year player who isn't going to get in anyone's first team or bench. Is it better to sit them in your u19s and allow a senior player to tutor them for personality boosts?

3. How many games per season (roughly) do you need to play your youngster to get them a a maximum CA improvement possible for that year? I know the 'reputation' of the competition/league they play their games in contributes a lot, so a first team league outing should be worth more 'CA boost' than a reserve fixture, but has anyone worked out exactly how much use 'playing kids' is? The reason I ask is that I found myself with a Champions League group with a couple of poor sides and played 75% kids in both legs in the group stage, and I'm wondering what a huge 'rep' game like that would do for their progression.

It's no fun when your 'The New Messi' turns into an utter flop through not progressing properly, and I was hoping to clear up some questions in order to allow me to field a home-grown side and enjoy watching my team grow in the process.
 
Good questions, Im wondering myself about those things... I have noticed that loaning out players doesnt help at all, in fact it always seems to lower their potential ratings after they return, Even If they had succesfull season on loan in the same country. Seems odd to me. Also if it is better to switch training schedules for players after a couple of months so they dont get stuck with the same training for years?.
 
From what I understand loaning only does anything if they get played, however unless you're loaning out a quality player they won't get 60 games a season, more like 20-30 if they're in a top side. I've made a spreadsheet of all the players loaned out in my save (lots of promising youngsters) and have differentiated them by Active and Inactive leagues in which they are playing football, as well as games played on loan. If there's no upgrade in CA for non-active leagues then I assume it's a waste of time (beyond a rep boost, possibly).

Regarding training, training itself is more to do with redistributing attributes (or moving ability around), so in theory it makes sense to make them specialise in areas important for their position - the only difference I presume is for older players who already have well developed physical stats - presumably you can put these guys in a seperate schedule to 'maintain' their physical stats but not decrease them while focusing on other areas of the game. Don't treat that as gospel, though.
 
If you are using a customised training regime for a particular player, and you have decent coaching staff, then playing them yourself for 45 minutes in 8-10 games per season will yield far greater improvements to their attributes than loaning them somewhere else.

Utilise them in games where you are already ahead, or where you're dominant favourites to win, and it shouldn't affect results too much.
 
For Barca I find using Spanish Cup games as the perfect occasion to use youth players. Even if the youth underperform you can use the big guns in the second leg to secure progression.

It is a bit of a risk but the board don't care about the Spanish Cup...so as long as you don't lose against Real or Espanyol
 
If you are using a customised training regime for a particular player, and you have decent coaching staff, then playing them yourself for 45 minutes in 8-10 games per season will yield far greater improvements to their attributes than loaning them somewhere else.

Utilise them in games where you are already ahead, or where you're dominant favourites to win, and it shouldn't affect results too much.

Thanks for this, the ballpark figure, 8-10 games is a lot lower than what I feared, indeed it means I should be rotating pretty much every game if I can afford it. I'm working on the assumption that Experience related CA boosts are capped, but it must be capped based on a few variables (to name a few below), presumably the reduction in CA/PA difference causes the gain to slow, however from posts I've raid it's apparantly very rare to get more than a 15 CA increase on top of training increases. In short, why shouldn't I give Bojan 60 games a season and power-CA him to a world-star at 20?

- Reputation of matches played in (competition reputation - static as far as I am aware)
- Reputation of opposition
- Is the fixture competitive or non-competitive
- CA/PA difference does affect training, I have no idea if it does the same for match experience

This is especially important when it comes to loaning talented players who you can guarantee first team football elsewhere, i.e. I recently loaned Lodeiro to Juventus for first team football. He's looking at 40 games a season, but I want to quantify whether it's more useful for him to 'train' with Juve in a non-active league (Juve have outstanding facilities, and at the moment I have no idea if loaned players train at all with non-active teams, which is a key factor for me) or sit in my side getting reserve football and the odd first team game plus training with my top coaches (plus tutoring). The important consequence for a top club is that it doesn't allow for your youngsters to get a game, i.e. Lodeiro is taking a reserve team slot which forces someone else onto the bench and hurts their fitness level, and as far as I am aware match fitness plays an important part in attribute increases - inactive players get rusty it seems, even if they are training.

I don't want a promising 16 year old to not be able to get a game whatsoever, non-competitive or otherwise, as training players to Barca first team level takes a lot of years unless they're a brilliant prospect. If you look at the most recent example of Pedro coming through to Barca's first team after arriving at the age of 17, he's starting to look like a first team regular after his breakout season at 22 as well as playing in the world cup. So five years to train a potential star to a top talent in this case.

I'm assuming the most important factor is competitive vs. non-competitive. Which is why teenagers who sit in the Barca U19 side playing 30 games a season develop significantly slower from match experience than those given a first team run-out now and again, even if you account for differenting values of Determination and Professionalism. At the moment I'm making the most of Tutoring to rapidly increase mental stats in the first season as well as to pick up the greatest gains possible in the first season, u19 action in the 2nd season, and potentially a loan or some rare first team minutes in the third. At that point, at 19, you usually know if they're going to develop the way I want or not, I'm trying to try and control this as much as possible.

---------- Post added at 11:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:01 AM ----------

For Barca I find using Spanish Cup games as the perfect occasion to use youth players. Even if the youth underperform you can use the big guns in the second leg to secure progression.

It is a bit of a risk but the board don't care about the Spanish Cup...so as long as you don't lose against Real or Espanyol

Yeah, at the moment I'm using CL group games against poor teams, Spanish Cup and league games against non-physical sides (otherwise the kids get pushed off the ball all game) and give a half first team, half reserve team. The problem is normally that I have too many good prospects to give first team time, so loaning needs to be used. I need to confirm the order in potential gain of the following (and I'm ignoring mental stats expediting training gains at the moment), at the moment I'm assuming the following:

> Largest Gain
- First team action 10+ games 1st team, tutor and u19 for fitness, training
- Handful of 1st team games, tutor, u19, training
- Tutor, u19, training
- u19, training
> Smallest Gain

The real crux is how do the following fit into the list above:

- On loan playing first team games, active league
- On loan playing first team games, inactive league

The assumption would be that the following is the most effective way to train a player:
- Loaned to Christmas with first team games in an active league, tutor upon return, competitive games and u19 with top coaches for training

My main question is how effective this is, especially inactive vs. active leagus.
 
I think it is best to loan your best youth prospests out or make sure they always get in the reserve games. I am in my 17th season with Arsenal and won stacks on trophies, all I care about is training really good players now and I make sure my best youth players play 20 games at least every season if I fail to loan them out. I don't mind, I can get away with having a near full squad of youth and still beat the top sides. The only problem is it makes my first team players majorly unhappy and I've done an Arsene Wenger this season, selling my best players just so they don't get unhappy when I play youths. I buy great youth prospects as quick as possible and cheap as possible so they become home grown and can make 30mil off them in the future. This has become second nature to me as I have failed in the past at controlling budgets. Whether you like it or not you will have to steal other sides youth gems because 80% of your youth intakes will be guaranteed **** no matter how many times you play them. I have bought so many youths that they have overflown my squad and I have been forced to sell big players. But I don't mind as because this has become a cycle, the major players at my club are my successful youth prospects. If you have a Wonderkid I would suggest playing him for 30 games - that's not an exaggeration. Every season I would buy more than I sell. Not now. This last season I sold a whopping £221m and bought only £41m through fifteen or so great youth prospects. It's a lot of signings but it works just as long as I sell just as many players too as I used to find that my team overflowed.
 
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