New Youths

[spootytown]

I think this may have been suggested before, but it would be nice to have a youth program that somewhat reflects the mentality of the first team and coaching.

I never play 5-3-2 or 5-4-1, but my latest youth player was a sweeper. Lately, with transfer moves, I've been moving closer to a 3-4-3, but usually play 4-3-3. So basically, if I ever use this new youth player, it will be out of position.

It would be nice to rank players by position with a "wish list", based on formation and need. There could still be a random element to it, but with a 100% youth coach, you'd be more likely to create youths at positions that help more.

For example, if I use a 3-4-3 most often, I might rank the desire for a CM higher than CB. Or if I had great RMs but weak LMs, I'd rank LMs higher. Based on my team, SW always would be ranked last.

Finally, this new youth has an aggression of 100% . So not only will he play out of position every time for me, he'll also get carded almost every match doing so. I'm not saying we should be able to only get very low aggression players, but 100% is a bit extreme.

This could be an SPFA-only feature. Nonmembers would still get their youths, but purely at random (current system). Those with SPFA would still be random, but weighted slightly to make more sense and reflect reality.

I guess the simplest way to put this would be: as manager, I would never buy a SW, so why would my youth system develop one for me against the manager's wishes? I wouldn't buy a player at any position with a 100% aggression, so why would 'my staff' coach that?

[Razvanica]

Your suggestion would bring realism to the game, but I am afraid everybody would rank CMs, CFs and CBs as 'top priority' because these are the most wanted positions on the transfer list.

[spootytown]

Of course, that might be the trend overall right now, but my proposal isn't saying you get only what you ask for, just that those positions are more probable. And it depends on need too. At some point, a team might need a RF more than a CF, for example, so CF might not make their top 3.

Put it this way, right now, pure random says you have a 1/11 chance of getting any position, or 9.09%. So 9% chance you get a CM, 9% chance you get a SW, etc.

As an example, I'd propose something like
13%
12%
11%
10%
9%
9%
8%
8%
7%
7%
6%
where the chances of you getting a C* player would raised to around 1/8 instead of 1/11. And I could still end up getting a stupid sweeper, but the odds would only be 1/17 now.

This could be tied to youth coordinator rating (for example only 100% YCs can follow the instructions), and could be an SPFA only option. It could also be limited only to those who have a hyper modern youth centre.

Worst case would be the status quo, nothing changes. And in fact, even with these changes, people may not notice a difference right away, since a random component is still there.

If there are 33,000 youth players created this season (on average one per team--not sure how accurate that is...), the current system would create about 3000 new youths at each position. Under my proposal, even if everyone ranked CM first, CF third, and SW last, you'd get about 4000 new CMs, 3600 new CFs, and still 2000 new SWs, so it's not like entire positions would be vanishing or the hot ones would be overwhelming the market...

[SBroccoli]

Your suggestion would bring realism to the game, but I am afraid everybody would rank CMs, CFs and CBs as 'top priority' because these are the most wanted positions on the transfer list.

That is true, byt thinking about it, what harm could that do? It would increase the supply of the most demanded players and diminish the supply of those with the least demand. It would simply open up for a more welfunctioning market.

What is wrong with that?

[killer1982]

I fully support this idea for precisely the reasons SBrocolli states; it would make the transfer market function better, and since there is still a large element of randomness in it, it would still present a challenge to each player.